


The Space Between

by chickenlivesinpumpkin



Series: It Started in the Shower [8]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst, Bromance, Canon-Typical Violence, Dirty Talk, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Explicit Language, Light Dom/sub, Light Spanking, M/M, Rimming, boys in leather, boys in makeup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 02:25:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 47,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1881588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickenlivesinpumpkin/pseuds/chickenlivesinpumpkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being kicked out of Grimmauld Place by Harry, Draco lives hidden away in the Room of Requirement, nearly overwhelmed by his anger and grief. He's trying to learn to stand on his own two feet with the help of a few familiar faces, but the ultimate battle is coming to Hogwarts. And where trouble goes, Harry Potter follows. But Draco's not the boy that Harry left behind, and everything that's happened before this changes everything to come.</p><p>In the big finish of the series, Harry takes relationship advice from Snape, Draco learns that eyeliner is a boy's best friend, and a mouse kinda sorta helps save the world. Just a little bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It All Falls Down

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. There are only two chapters and a silly little epilogue left in the whole series, including this one. On the plus side, each of these chapters are fricking long, so we’ve got that going for us.
> 
> 2\. I would like to remind folks that this whole mess started as a one-shot PWP (or two…). If it hadn’t gotten such a warm reception, it would’ve ended there (I guess I’m saying you only have yourselves to blame—in a nice way, of course). I don’t really know how we ended up here, and by the end of this chapter, you’ll probably think I’m insane for taking this where I did (in a “wow, you kind of dreamt too big, Little Starfish, but you tried really hard” kind of way, not a David Lynch “what the hell just happened?” kind of way—if that makes any sense at all). I would consider low expectations a real favor at this point, because then we can all be pleasantly surprised when no one feels the need to track me through the internet and firebomb my house.
> 
> 3\. This update is brought to you in rapid turn-around time despite its ridiculous length because of Cheshiyre, who successfully blackmailed me into doing nothing else but writing for two days. While I do not generally condone this kind of treatment of writers, Cheshiyre did this with threats about subjecting adorable stuffed animals to an energetic and possibly venomous puppy, so it’s impossible to be anything but charmed and hardworking. Those are the best kinds of puppies, btw. Even with the deadline, though, if there are errors or bad writing, you can still blame me. I lack artistic integrity for the most part.
> 
> 4\. I don't own anything related to the Harry Potter Universe and I am making no money from any of this. Unfortunately.
> 
> 5\. Finally, the title of this part comes from the Dave Matthews Band song, the lyrics of which I found somewhat apropos.

 

 

The Room, which had heretofore been known as the Room of Hidden Things in Draco’s mind (a name that remained apt, as Draco, a very hidden thing, still resided within it) was quite swank as far as prisons went. He had started with a space the size of his bedroom back at the Manor, and he’d had nothing more than a bed, a fireplace, a blue armchair, a small corner bathroom, and a bookshelf. His possessions slowly expanded but not as much as anyone might have expected, because Draco didn’t need much. Depression, apparently, cured even the most rampant case of materialism.

And depression was what it was, because the first week without Potter was sheer hell.

Draco’s whole body hurt; muscles ached, his stomach was sick, his head pounded. He couldn’t think past the cavern in his chest, and he would have tried to cry it all out, but he couldn’t seem to manage it. He felt hot and dry inside, cracked like scorched earth, and no amount of wishing could give him the wet relief of tears.

Draco had never really thought of himself as a crier, exactly. He knew he wasn’t perfect by any stretch, and had always had a vague inkling that he was inappropriately flexible in a way that most other people were unyielding. But he’d believed rather fervently until very recently that he was smart enough and strong enough to survive anything that came at him. Living in the Manor with the Dark Lord, taking the Mark, running despite the risks…these were all things that might have broken some people.

He didn’t believe that anymore.

Perhaps if he’d had a cause, or something to fight for, or even a real distraction, he would’ve managed better. But no one needed him—what did he have to offer? No one cared—he’d been all but abandoned. He was a thing without meaning or purpose or value.

He was ashamed and embarrassed to find that even the smallest task felt enormous now—dressing, brushing his teeth, eating—and a great deal of the time he simply couldn’t call forth the energy. He spent most of his time sleeping. At least twelve hours a day that first week. He kept no schedule; he slept when he felt tired and rose when he couldn’t sleep anymore. Hours wasted away while he silently stared into the fire; he sometimes thought vaguely of different things: his parents, the Dark Lord, the Manor, the choices he’d made, the fact that every single person who had claimed to love him had cut him loose and what that said about him, but mostly he thought of nothing at all. He lived in a kind of fog that first week; empty, stalled, in shock and resigned at the same time. Now and then he tried listlessly to read, but his attention span was poor of late, and he frequently found himself re-reading the same paragraphs over and over, which made the whole enterprise a waste of time.

Snape brought food twice and stayed for tea and conversation. It was painfully clear that the professor did not know how to approach the topic of Potter or Draco’s rather obvious lack of emotional stability. He seemed about to bring it up a few times but flinched away, perhaps concerned that he would make things worse. Draco sure as hell wasn’t going to bring it up.

So Snape, never a good conversationalist on his best day, was left on his own to fill the awkward silences, which were common, because Draco could only rarely think of anything to say. And when something did occur to him, it was never anything worth going to the effort to put into words.

The professor was his only contact with the outside world. His visits alone stood as proof that people and things and events existed beyond the door to the Room. Snape told him of some of these things; they tended to go in one ear and out the other. Despite the fact that Draco was utterly incapable of being remotely welcoming, Snape continued to show up and drink his tea and talk about life and war and news. This should have been a comfort, but Draco was always slightly relieved when he left. There were two reasons for this: one, it felt like work just to remember that he wasn’t alone in the Room, so the visits were exhausting, and two, because that sallow face did not wear worry very well and it just made Draco feel guilty.

The only time Snape brought up his father, in relation to some movement of the Death Eaters, Draco had told him to “kindly fuck off mentioning that bastard,” and he took it as a sign of how much Snape was bothered by Draco’s mental state that the professor dropped the subject immediately without a single complaint about the way the request was phrased.

At the beginning of the second week, some of the numbness wore off, which was not, in Draco’s opinion, an improvement. He was pretty sure he was crying in his sleep; he would wake up with his face all itchy and crusty. And he began to get very angry over the stupidest things—if he couldn’t find one of his socks or his porridge got cold because he’d forgotten to eat it—and he got into the habit of asking the room for loose bits of wood to put in a pile just so he could cast violent spells and watch the sticks explode.

He continued to sleep and stare and pretend to read, but now he was often overtaken by a furious need to _move_ even though he couldn’t leave. Thoughts of his parents and the stupid war and Voldemort’s red eyes and cold hands upon his buttocks and just…just _all_ of it…he could not get away from any of it. There was nowhere else to go. He was stuck.

During the third week, the anger worsened. In fact, the outbursts got so bad that one day he rather frightened Snape; the teacher expressed curiosity about the pile of haphazardly stacked beams and twigs stacked in the corner, and Draco had demonstrated for him exactly what they were for. And then he got lost in it, and when his vision was no longer blurred with rage-tears, he turned, out of breath and shaking, to see Snape white-faced and wide-eyed at the smoking pile of ash.

“I think,” Snape said carefully, “that we should find you a hobby.”

Draco had laughed then, something he had not done since he’d returned to Hogwarts. It felt uncomfortable, like a wool sweater. It must have sounded horrible, as well, because Snape took a step back, perturbed. Then the laughter subsided, and Draco mostly felt guilty and empty again, and he’d simply said, “Okay.”

Snape set Draco to grading homework for the Carrows’ Dark Arts and Muggle Studies classes.

This wasn’t as bad an idea as it might have seemed on the surface. Draco was mildly surprised to learn that the Carrows knew how to read in the first place, let alone that they bothered to do something as mundane as assigning homework. And in fact, it was clear that they weren’t reading it or returning it anyway. So Draco’s lazy, only-occasional attempts to read through first-year essays and mark commas and obvious mistakes about topics like the Unforgivable Curses (now apparently part of the curriculum for eleven year olds) were still a vast improvement.

Snape had told the Carrows that a house-elf had been assigned as an assistant to complete the task; it was another measure of the Death Eaters’ lack of preparation as teachers that they didn’t see the problems with this answer.

Draco slept, and he raged, and he stared into the fire, and sometimes he read, and sometimes he graded. He became used to the solitude rapidly. Began, even, to be grateful for it. His social skills—not what anyone would say was his strong suit to begin with—atrophied.

Draco began to think that he would live the rest of his life in the Room, empty and angry by turns, wordless and virtually alone. Sometimes this seemed a travesty. Mostly, though, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

*

For all those reasons, the first day when Longbottom showed up was awkward. Draco was sitting in his blue armchair and staring into the flames, a stack of unmarked essays (on the subject of just when it was appropriate to curse Muggles in public, the correct answer given in lecture being—judging from the homework responses—whenever the caster was bored) in his lap. The door suddenly flew open and the other boy darted through, slamming it behind him and turning, out of breath, only to stop short. The two of them were left staring at each other, open-mouthed.

“The Carrows?” Draco asked finally.

“Running from,” Longbottom replied, somewhat nervously. “You?”

“Hiding from,” Draco said. His voice cracked from disuse.

“Right.” He surveyed Draco carefully from top to bottom, then took in the rest of the room. Seeming to find no danger, he asked, “Can I stay a while? Just until they clear out?”

Draco hesitated, wondering if Longbottom would expect to be entertained. What would they do, alone in the Room together for Merlin knew how long? Intending to warn the other boy that he would likely be bored, he said dumbly, “All I have is a fire.”

In retrospect, that must’ve seemed quite the non-sequitur. Longbottom didn’t seem to know what to say in response. But after a long beat of silence, he shrugged.

He approached somewhat cautiously, with his wand still out; he obviously didn’t trust Draco not to do something violent. That was all right. Draco didn’t really trust himself, either. He realized belatedly that the proper thing to do was offer a seat and refreshments, but by the time he remembered, Longbottom had asked the room for another chair and sat down. And Draco didn’t have any refreshments anyway.

“So what’s that then?” Longbottom asked when the stillness became too uncomfortable, pointing at the papers Draco held.

“Essays,” Draco said. “I’m grading.”

“You’re…grading.”

Draco nodded. “The Carrows are too good to check their own assignments, so I do it. Sort of.” This last he added a little guiltily; he hadn’t really put effort into it, after all.

“You’re the house-elf?” Longbottom asked doubtfully.

“How do you know about that?”

“They bragged that Snape thought them important enough to warrant an assistant.”

More silence fell. Longbottom was tapping his wand tip against his knee and looking at the bed and bathroom; Draco wondered what he was supposed to be doing.

“Are you living in here?” Longbottom asked.

“Maybe.” Draco paused. “I mean yes.”

“Oh.”

“I left.”

Longbottom blinked, confused. “You mean school?”

“No. The Manor. The Dark Lord is living there now, and he was…well, I left. So now I live here.”

“How did you get into the school?”

Draco hesitated; he did not dare tell Longbottom it had been Snape who helped him, so he simply said, “Oh, you know,” and trailed off awkwardly.

“Not really,” Longbottom replied, “but okay.”

“Okay.”

For a few minutes neither of them said anything. Then Longbottom asked, “What do you do in here?”

“Nothing, really,” Draco answered honestly.

“Uh-huh.”

Still more pressure-filled silence.

“How are you getting food?” Longbottom asked. “I remember from fifth-year that the Room doesn’t make food.”

Draco couldn’t be bothered making up a decent lie about this, so he just gestured widely and blandly around the Room. “From places, really.”

Longbottom nodded, and studied Draco again, even more closely. “Are you on potions?”

“What?” For a second, Draco could only think of Potter and _Opposo Sentima Obsta Desiro,_ and the ache in his chest—temporarily forgotten in the weirdness of Neville Longbottom’s presence—came rushing back. He bent over abruptly, putting his head between his knees as he got light-headed.

“No,” he said, in the general direction of his feet. Huh. He wasn’t wearing shoes. “No potions.”

Longbottom was suddenly kneeling before him, and he sounded alarmed. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Draco said, looking up from his knees and meeting surprisingly kind eyes. “I don’t think so.”

Longbottom chewed nervously on his lip a second then said, “Is there anything I can do?”

Draco regarded the other boy with some surprise. He’d always been mean to Longbottom—he could admit it. He’d known his words and actions were mean at the time. He’d done them on purpose. He didn’t really have it in him to feel bad about any of it, but he did find himself a little bemused.

“Why?” he asked, legitimately curious.

Longbottom shrugged again. “You’re…” he waved a hand at Draco’s general person then trailed off.

“I’m what?”

Longbottom flinched a little. “Sort of pathetic.”

Draco had not thought of himself that way. He considered it for a moment.

“Not to be mean,” Longbottom added apologetically.

“No, that’s fair,” Draco replied. He slowly sat up.

“So is there? Anything I can do, I mean?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

Yet another long silence, during which Longbottom got up and went back to his chair. Finally, he asked, “What’s the wood over there for?”

“Temper tantrums.”

The other boy didn’t even bother to respond to that.

After a while, Draco asked, “Are you going to tell anyone I’m here?” That would be a bad thing, he supposed, even if he felt removed from the fear he thought he should be feeling at the idea.

Longbottom sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“That’s it?”

“What else would I say?”

“I don’t know. Threats, maybe. I’d half expect an Imperius, even. At least an argument.”

It took a minute, but Draco eventually figured out that Longbottom was expecting a response as to why none of these things were happening, so he said, “I’m kind of tired.”

Longbottom nodded, watching Draco like he was a strange type of bug. “Sure,” he said slowly. “That can happen. Someone gave you grading to do?”

“It’s a hobby.”

“Oh.” Longbottom frowned. “Who gave that to you if it’s a secret that you’re here?”

Draco exhaled, not sure what to say, and then he decided that if Longbottom already thought he was unstable or on potions, he might as well get something out of it and play the card he’d been unexpectedly granted. “I don’t know,” he said, and his very real apathy must’ve been convincing, because something like pity twisted in the other boy’s face.

“Okay,” he said softly. He seemed to be thinking very hard. “I’ll make you a deal, Malfoy. You promise not to hurt anyone or help the Carrows in any way or work with any Death Eaters, and I won’t tell anyone you’re here.”

Draco looked down at the essays in his lap. “Can I grade?”

Longbottom looked doubtful. “Do you actually want to?”

“Not really.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

“I was just staring and breaking things before,” he explained, which was true but also definitely pathetic; even through the haze of disconnection in which he was currently mired he could see that, and winced a little.

“Maybe best keep it up, then,” Longbottom said.

“Okay.”

Longbottom had gone then, after casting an uncertain look as he did so, and Draco had found himself exhausted from the effort of making conversation and gone to sleep—it was only once he climbed into bed that he realized he’d never changed out of his pajamas that morning. No wonder Draco looked like he was under the influence. He thought that was the last he would see of the round-faced boy, but Longbottom returned three days later, this time with a bruise on his face.

“I just wanted to see how you are,” he said.

Draco considered. “No real improvement, I suppose. You?”

“About the same.”

They studied each other uncomfortably for a minute. Then Longbottom said, “I brought a Wizard’s Chess set.”

“All right, then.”

So they played a couple games and eventually the times when they weren’t talking were less painful. As he crossed over into his fourth week, Draco began to stifle in the Room. The periods of time when he felt relieved by his solitude were slowly replaced by longer periods of time in which he felt choked by it. He became desperate for any human companionship that didn’t come with a Death Eater’s mask. He even would’ve welcomed a Weasley. His only interactions with the world were through Longbottom and Snape. And even when Snape was there, he wasn’t exactly a sterling conversationalist. He never wanted to talk about Quidditch. So Draco began to make more of an effort to make conversation and interact with Longbottom. He chalked up his attempts to talk to pure emotional manipulation.

It made Slytherin sense to be polite and friendly, because it meant Longbottom would come back.

On Longbottom’s fourth visit, they talked about what was going on in the school for more than an hour. It was stilted and careful and obscenely polite, and it had taken more energy on Draco’s part than running a mile would’ve, because he kept feeling unsure about what to say. But the silences between them continued to get shorter and shorter, and those that remained got easier and easier, and soon their interactions stopped leaving him exhausted.

Longbottom was a strange cat, he decided one afternoon. The other boy been sort of delicate growing up; easily upset and constantly insecure. Those traits weren’t gone, exactly, but they’d been tempered by a newfound confidence and strength. This struck Draco as a nearly awe-inspiring accomplishment. He’d made himself into a leader, maybe even a warrior. Draco imagined that the other students probably looked at him with respect.

What must that be like?

“How did you do it?” Draco asked one day over another game of chess.

“Do what?”

“Become…better, I guess.”

Longbottom looked up at him, the game temporarily forgotten. He thought about it for a long minute, then shrugged. “I was scared a lot growing up. Weak.”

“I noticed.”

Longbottom let out a soft chuckle. “I’m aware.”

Draco bit his lip. “Sorry.”

“I know.” Longbottom dropped his gaze to the board, but absently. He wasn’t thinking about his strategy. “I just got tired of it. So I stopped.”

Draco was taken aback. “You stopped. Just like that?”

“Basically.”

“That’s not helpful. How did you stop?”

Longbottom shrugged again. “Just…whenever I noticed I was doing it—letting fear keep me from doing or saying something—I forced myself to do it anyway. I’m not saying it’s easy, but over time you get used to it, and then it’s a habit, and eventually, it’s just you.”

Draco moved his knight. “I’m not a very good person.”

“I know.”

“I started trying to be one. A while ago.”

“Yeah?” Longbottom didn’t look up; if not for the fact that he didn’t seem to have noticed that Draco had moved, he’d have thought the other boy was completely focused on the game. Longbottom was being pointedly casual, Draco thought, and actually felt his lips rise in a little smile.

“Well, some stuff happened, and I left the Manor, and then…other stuff happened, and I realized I wanted to be someone other than me, because I’m not enough as I am. But I don’t know how.”

Longbottom twisted his face up. “Maybe you need something more specific than just being different. What exactly do you want to be?”

“I don’t know. Just not this.”

“Think about it.” Longbottom directed his queen forward, and she demolished Draco’s bishop. Draco wasn’t paying attention.

“I want to have friends,” he said quietly.

Longbottom hesitated. “What about Crabbe and Goyle?”

“Good friends. Not minions.”

“Well, it’s a step in the right direction that you know the difference, I suppose.”

“I know that to have friends you have to be one. I don’t know how to do that, though.”

“You are doing that,” Longbottom said. “Right now.”

Draco blinked. “We’re just talking.”

“That’s how it starts.”

“Oh.” Draco thought about this some more, then said, in a rush, “I want to be nice. I want to stop doing things that make people feel bad, and I want to learn how to say things sarcastically without being mean, and I want to stop feeling like I should lie if it means I don’t have to deal with things and maybe I could figure out how to be brave and stop thinking more about what’s going to save my arse than about what has to be done and I’m tired of being someone who turns on people because I’m scared.”

“Hmm. Maybe one thing at a time,” Longbottom said, smiling at him. He had another bruise on his face, but it didn’t make him look less cheerful. “But it’s a good list.”

“Yeah.” Draco felt absurdly out of breath.

“Can I ask what prompted all of this? The whole not-wanting-to-hurt-people thing?”

“It’s sort of ugly.”

“I can take it.”

Draco couldn’t look at Longbottom while he said it, so he spoke to the board. “The Dark Lord made me use the Cruciatus on Muggles and Death Eaters who’d failed him. They would scream and scream, and sometimes their bones would break, they would piss themselves and beg, and once he made me do it to a kid who was younger than me, even, and I…think one of them might’ve died later, but I never asked, because I couldn’t stand knowing.” He lifted his head finally and caught the expression of horror on Longbottom’s face. He cleared his throat. “You could say I lost my taste for being a bully.”

“That’s fucked up,” Longbottom said.

“Yeah.” He really wanted it to be true that he’d left because he didn’t want to hurt people anymore, but the reality was different. And if he didn’t want to be a liar anymore he supposed he should do as Longbottom suggested and just stop. “That’s not why I left though.”

“No?”

“It probably should’ve been. But it wasn’t enough.”

“So when did you?”

“Not until the Dark Lord…well, he started…he got…he…” He cleared his throat again, forcing his voice to be stronger. “He touched me. Nothing too bad, but I could see where it was going. So I left. But only because it was in my own best interest.”

Longbottom didn’t say anything for a long time. “It shouldn’t have taken a risk to yourself before you acted,” he said slowly, “but there’s nothing wrong with protecting yourself. You shouldn’t feel guilty that you acted to keep him from…Merlin. I just think maybe now you’re ready to act to protect other people too. Little steps, Malfoy. At least it helped you realize you wanted to be different.”

“You’re too nice,” Draco blurted.

Longbottom laughed. “Probably. Maybe I’ll work on that next.”

“Don’t. It’s good. You have to make up for my lack of niceness.”

“That’s certainly true,” Longbottom said. “That’s also why I have to be good at Wizard’s Chess. Because you’re terrible.”

Draco laughed. “I haven’t exactly been at my best.”

“Excuses, excuses.”

Draco snorted, and decided that if he wanted to win, all he needed to do was come up with a distraction for the other boy. Longbottom had never been able to multi-task for shit. “So, are you ever going to tell me why your face turns bright red whenever the Abbot bint’s name comes up?”

As he’d expected, Longbottom flushed. “No.”

“You love her.”

“I do not! She just…has nice hair.”

Draco remembered, very distinctly, a moment when Potter had said that to him, and his smile faded. “That’s a good thing in a person,” he managed.

*

Over the following weeks, they stopped calling each other Longbottom and Malfoy and became Neville and Draco. Neville got into the habit of visiting nearly every day, and Draco enjoyed the visits almost entirely; the only exceptions were when Neville’s blossoming crush on the Abbot girl reminded Draco of his own failed relationship.

Being insightful, though, Neville soon realized that the subject made Draco quiet and sad, and was careful not to wallow too often.

Before long, the temper tantrums tapered, and then stopped altogether. Waking up knowing he’d been crying in his sleep didn’t stop, but some of his energy began to come back.

And when Neville began to talk about the rapidly worsening conditions in the school, Draco’s resultant focus and concern made him realize just how out of it he’d allowed himself to become.

He had learned an important lesson. If he ever had a broken heart and a massively-messed up family life again, he would not recover while spending weeks alone in a room with barely anything to do. That was pretty much the worst way to recover from anything, actually. Even if you were in hiding, had nowhere else to go, and very little to contribute, it was important to find something, or else you turned into a slug.

He began to take more care with the grading, and tried to skew his comments toward more legitimate realities than the Death Eater point of view, figuring that the Carrows would never bother to check what he was writing, and hoping that at least a few of the students would heed his temperance. For instance, when one student wrote that there were no negative consequences to using a curse on a Muggle, Draco wrote: _you’re dumb if you think that._

He thought he might be a good teacher.

Neville seemed to truly enjoy his company, which salvaged his ego a little from the continuing sting of getting stupendously dumped. It had been a while since Draco had caught even a whiff of pity, and he helped Draco practice being a good friend. He said things like: _this would be a good place to ask me why I think that_ and _maybe a little less vehemence about why Gryffindor House sucks when you’re talking to a Gryffindor_ and _see, that was sort of a prat thing to say and it made me want to trip you. Just a bit._

And slowly, Draco was getting better.

One of his favorite things about being friends with Neville, though, were his stories about the minor rebellions that the Carrows faced from students and teachers. He would introduce them as if they were epic tales of soldiers and spies: _Ginny Weasley and the Escape from Snape’s Office_ or _Seamus Finnegan and the Quest for More Dungbombs to Drop in the DADA Classroom._

Neville also brought him the occasional treat from his Hogsmeade visits until they were cancelled—licorice wands from Honeydukes, the occasional joke or puzzle from Zonko’s, sometimes just gossip about who had been seen making out in Madam Puddifoot’s. However, Draco’s favorite little gift was a pale gray mouse that had apparently been intended as food for a snake one of the Carrows had brought as a pet.

“Did you steal him?” Draco asked, holding the little creature in one hand and stroking its back with a finger.

Neville reddened and shrugged. “I guess.”

Draco actually laughed, feeling absurdly touched. “You’re rising in my estimation.”

They asked the Room for a crate and transfigured it into a cage themselves, as Draco had wanted to control the specifications. He made it roomy enough that his new pet wouldn’t feel constrained, and got lots of soft shavings for him to sleep on. Neville brought in mouse pellets on a regular basis, and Draco supplemented his diet with occasional bits of healthy table scraps.

Very quickly, the mouse became Draco’s most prized source of happiness. He lavished attention upon the critter, and it responded with affection and trust. It crawled into his lap whenever he sat still for more than five minutes, content to just be with him for hours. Draco supposed that Potter had been right about one thing particularly. Draco did desperately need to belong to someone, even if it was just a mouse.

Draco named the little critter Weasel 2. He’d sort of missed having a rodent around.

*

Spending Christmas alone in a dank room with a broken heart? Draco’s thoughts were like barbed wire. And then Neville showed up with a cheery “Hope you like sweet yams, Draco, because I’ve got loads,” and Draco had said yes, even though he really hated the things. That wasn’t lying, exactly, because he and Neville had also discussed white lies in the interest of preserving your friends’ feelings, and Draco had begun practicing that as well, although sometimes when Neville found out about one, he rolled his eyes and felt the need to explain again about how a lie only counted as white if the only consequences of the truth were hurt feelings.

They cast stasis charms to keep the food warm, and then conjured little lights on strings to put around the room and a big wireless in the corner to play old wizarding carols, some of which Draco remembered his mother singing during the holidays when he was younger. They ate while they played Exploding Snap and it was…fun.

“You want to talk about it?” Neville asked later that evening, licking pudding off his spoon.

“Talk about what?” Draco was sitting in his blue chair, legs outstretched on an ottoman, empty plate on the small table beside him (as Neville kept showing up, Draco had eventually asked the Room for more furniture). He was so full he felt slightly sick. Weasel 2 sat in his lap, contentedly eating a bit of cheesy green bean.

Neville shrugged. “Well, you told me what made you leave the Manor, but you haven’t said what it was that made you realize you wanted to make all these changes? Want to talk about that?”

Draco shook his head. “Not remotely.”

Because how could he tell Neville? He could imagine the conversation all too easily:

_“I was dosed by a potion and it made Harry Potter fall in love with me and I loved him back and in the middle of all of that was some truly insane sex that I miss almost as much as I miss him, and I miss him a lot, enough to fill the Black Lake, actually, even though he crushed my beating heart under the sole of one of those ugly fucking trainers he wears and now everything hurts. Then a fragment of the Dark Lord’s soul began to possess him so he tried to rape me, but before he could the horcrux was destroyed, which made the potion wear off and Harry went back to hating me and he will never touch me again because he thinks I’m filth. And I thought about it and I realized he was right. He’s not going to come back to me and there’s no point in trying to convince him that I’m a better person and I’m not sure I’d even want to because it was a fucking ugly break-up, but since I’m sort of stuck with myself, I thought I should at least be someone I don’t hate.”_

_And Neville would blink, wide-eyed, and say, “Oh. That explains it.”_

Nothing about that would fix any of his problems.

No, Draco had absolutely no intention of getting into that mess, no matter how nice it might be to have a sympathetic ear.

“You sure?” Neville asked. “You seem…sad a lot of the time.”

Draco glanced up, found Neville carefully studying his plate.

“Hard year,” Draco managed finally. “Let’s not, yeah?”

“Sure. Perhaps I could instead regale you with the story of Luna Lovegood and the Proper Uses of Thestral Poo?”

Draco smirked. “Absolutely.”

*

Neville began bringing copies of his legitimate assignments (i.e. everything that wasn’t taught by a Carrow) to Draco, ostensibly so he wouldn’t lose his skills as a wizard, but really because he was so bored that even schoolwork sounded interesting. Now that he wasn’t sleeping any more than the regular eight hours a night and had eliminated all but the last bit of depressive fire-staring, he had more hours to fill, and flying on a broomstick in the Room wasn’t the same as flying outside. Neville couldn’t come more than an hour or so a day a few times a week or people would get suspicious, so even though he had a friend, it didn’t keep him from rattling around in his cage like a trapped bird. All he could do was listen to the wireless, grade, read, and pet Weasel 2.

The empty days had begun to seem unending, and eventually he was going to kill someone, and at this rate it would be Neville, which seemed unfair after all the boy had done for him. So schoolwork it was. He read Neville’s notes and completed the homework even though it never got turned in. He practiced on his own in the mornings, and once Neville arrived they worked on defensive charms and conjuring spells together. After a while Draco began teaching Neville all the hexes and jinxes and curses he knew, because they both knew that one day soon Neville might need them.

“You know,” Neville said thoughtfully one day, “You’d be of considerable help to the war effort here in the school.”

“Shut up,” Draco said, feeding a bit of lettuce to Weasel 2, who was once more happily snuggled up in Draco’s lap.

“I’m not kidding. The good guys could benefit from knowing some of these curses and counter-curses.”

“Talk to Snape. He knows a hell of a lot more than I do.”

“I am not talking to Snape.”

By this time, Draco had admitted that Snape had been the one to rescue him from the Manor, and eventually to bring him to Hogwarts, but he’d carefully left out Snape’s true allegiance. Neville spent far too much time under the thumbs of the Carrows, and a bit of misplaced Veritaserum could get the professor killed. So while Neville might have his suspicions, he hadn’t asked, and Draco had let him think that Snape was simply looking out for a student from his House.

“Then get some of those Aurors down here pronto and I’ll teach them up right,” Draco had said sarcastically.

Neville gave him a look. “Obviously I don’t mean Aurors.”

“Who then?”

“The D.A.”

“What the fuck is that?”

*

Once the official story of fifth year and the D.A. came out, Neville became freer with the stories of the small rebellions around the school, explaining a great many of his bruises and scratches. He also began to teach Draco the spellwork they’d covered in a lot of their old meetings, the most impressive of which was the Patronus Charm. Neville had learned it, of course, from Potter, and at first, Draco had zero luck with it. He was abysmal, actually. Even Neville was a little taken aback by how thoroughly Draco produced absolutely nothing even after several days of practice.

“Don’t you have any happy thoughts?” Neville asked.

“Apparently not.”

This wasn’t really the problem, Draco knew. The real issue was that performing the charm invariably made him think of Potter, and the grief that would well up in him then was still potent enough that any attempt at the incantation was utterly useless. Even his happiest memories of his time with Potter were tinged now with melancholy.

“Well,” Neville said uncertainly. “Just keep banging away at it.”

*

In late January, Neville brought Ginny Weasley with him.

Draco was nervous despite Neville’s protestations that Ginny was a straightforward and forgiving person, as well as being strong enough to stick up for Draco with others if he managed to impress her.

This did not seem likely at first.

“So you’re the reason Neville says we can’t use the Room for D.A. meetings,” she said, without even saying hello.

“Yeah.”

“That’s rude,” she said mildly.

In the past, this was the sort of thing that would’ve made Draco start spouting hostilities. But he suspected that she was actually poking at him just to see if he would fly off the handle about having a right to live wherever he damn well pleased

“Struggle builds character,” he replied calmly.

“I’m actually a pretty developed human being already,” she said.

“I’m not even going to touch what you just said, because I’m trying to grow as a person.”

That surprised a laugh out of her, even as she folded her arms self-consciously across her chest. “What does that mean?” she asked. “Growing as a person?”

“I’m kind of trying not to be a prat all the time.”

“Sounds like a worthwhile goal. How are you going about it?”

“Mostly it’s just Neville telling me when I’m fucking up.”

“Oh!” she said, sounding excited and plopping down on the sofa. “Can I help?”

She continued to come and see him, and Draco suspected that all of this was her way of more or less giving him a job interview to see if he was actually capable of joining their efforts without turning them in. However, soon she was just coming to hang out; she took great enjoyment out of helping him grade essays with snarky comments, and expressed identical confusion to Neville’s as to why Draco’s Patronus seemed to be hiding from him.

A major point in her favor was that she wasn’t remotely offended by the name he’d given Weasel 2. If anything, she was amused. And she took to the little mouse very quickly, and bemoaned several times that Neville hadn’t given the little creature to her as a pet.

However, it was her reaction when Draco accidentally came out to her and Neville that really made him like her.

He’d never really thought sexually about boys before Potter; and for the first couple of months after, Draco was in such a fog that Neville could’ve walked around naked and he wouldn’t have paid any attention. But one morning, Neville dropped a bunch of books after tripping on a non-existent rug (Neville’s newfound confidence had not improved his clumsiness any), and Draco had risen from his chair to go help (being the friendly sort these days) only to come to a screeching halt. Because Neville, his friend who had lost weight and finally grown into his face and spent half his time roaming the stairwells of Hogwarts, had kind of a nice arse.

And Draco couldn’t help noticing. Well, maybe that was putting it delicately. He actually stopped and stared, at least until Ginny cleared her throat and gave him an amused little grin. She noticed quickly that Draco was uncomfortable, though, and hurried to assure him that she didn’t care if he wanted to look at boys all day. In fact, her immediate support and gentle teasing had made him choke up a little, and she’d given him a kiss on the cheek and a hug when she saw this. Neville, although thoroughly red, had hastened to state that he had the same position.

Draco let them think that he was struggling with being gay. He supposed it was reason enough to be disconcerted, as the whole incident brought home to him how little he’d considered his sexuality outside of just letting Potter fuck him at all hours of the day and night. It was far easier than explaining the real source of his discomfort.

The truth was, he’d had zero sex drive since he’d been kicked out of Grimmauld Place, and the only boy he’d ever viewed that way was Potter. Looking at Neville, even just instinctively and without any kind of actual interest, had provoked a wide array of feelings that Draco had no idea what to do with. First was confusion, because Neville was his friend, and it felt weird to look at him that way after everything Neville had become to him. Second was fear at the idea that Neville, while okay with Draco being queer, would be worried that Draco might be attracted to him, and all of that would interfere with their friendship. More disturbing, however, was the guilt. It pissed him off to no end that he’d actually felt guilty for noticing Neville when Potter had been the one to kick Draco loose. He owed the other boy nothing. In fact, Draco thought, it would serve him right.

He wished there was a way to get someone to help him make Potter jealous so that the other boy would see just what he’d lost.

Not Neville, of course—just the thought of it made Draco a little uncomfortable, as Neville wasn’t really his type, good arse or not, and it would likely decimate their friendship (now a very important thing to Draco) because Neville was straight. Even if he wasn’t, Draco figured the other boy could probably do better than a former Death Eater and disowned Malfoy prat.

But he occasionally daydreamed about meeting up with some random, blurry-faced student. And of course Potter would walk in right when Draco and the faceless student were having extraordinarily good sex and Potter would want to kill himself when he realized just what he’d given up.

Not a very realistic fantasy, maybe. And as much as the idea of meeting someone who might actually like him was appealing, opportunities were a bit thin on the ground when you lived in one room with only the occasional visitors, none of whom happened to be gay males. So he was stuck with his memories of Potter.

He’d been doing his best to avoid thoughts of Potter entirely, and that obviously included the sex, but once he’d come sufficiently out of his fog to start noticing other boys, it was probably inevitable that his dreams would begin to change.

The one that recurred most often was a loose reenactment of their first time. Draco was in the shower, steam billowing into his eyes and lungs, and he would be slowly running his hand along his cock. Then he would feel fingers on the back of his neck, brushing his hair out of the way so soft lips could press against his nape. Immediately afterwards, a big, rough hand would fit over his, taking over stroking him, and soon the body behind his—unyielding, demanding, hot—would press him against the tile and begin to rut against his buttocks.

There would be a hazy, dream-logic move into the hallway, and suddenly Draco would be on his hands and knees, with a mouth pressed to his arse, licking and stroking until Draco had become nothing more than a honeyed mess on the carpet. He didn’t even care that they were on the floor; he simply spread his legs and arched back into the questing tongue and moaned wantonly, dimly hearing a chuckle of very masculine satisfaction.

He came with that sound ringing in his ears and sat upright in bed, violently awake, breathing hard.

There was nothing in the dream that outwardly proved it had been Potter—Draco hadn’t seen the face of the man doing such illicit things to him. But he knew. The fact that it recalled the time they’d met up in the shower was enough, but it wasn’t necessary. Draco would never forget what it felt like to be in Potter’s arms, to feel his touch, his lips, his breath.

Alone in the dark Room, Draco cried out his broken heart until he nearly made himself sick.

The dream wasn’t what finally broke him down to sobs; it was the recollection of what had come after in real life: Potter had cuddled him and stroked his back and it was the first time in his life that Draco had ever just been held.

The dream wasn’t a one-time thing, unfortunately.

At least twice a week he woke up with tears drying on his cheeks and come drying in his pants.

That killed his mood each time it happened, although he managed not to sob like a child again—at least, not while he was awake.

“You’re not a very happy person, are you?” Ginny asked one day while they were studying. Neville looked up.

“Sure I am,” Draco said absently. He was rubbing a gentle finger over Weasel 2’s head with one hand and practicing wand movements with the other.

“Not really.” Ginny tapped the feather of her quill against her cheek thoughtfully. “You say all the right things and you put up a good front, but you’re not happy.”

He hesitated. “No, I’m not.”

“You want to tell us why?”

Draco thought about it, he really did. Part of him wished desperately for someone he could confide in, someone who would tell him, objectively, that he hadn’t deserved to be kicked aside that way, that it was understandable that he still seemed to love someone who had carved him open like that. He got the impression that Neville had told Ginny something of what Draco had been like in the beginning, and they were both very careful whenever the subject of Draco’s recent past came up, so it was obvious that they knew it had been hard.

He hedged a little, although he didn’t lie. “You mean besides being disowned and having a father who wants to kill me and a Dark Lord who wants to fuck me and a brand on my arm that I don’t believe in any more but can’t get rid of and being on the run so that I’m forced to hide for months in this tiny fucking room with no windows or space or _air_?”

She waited until she was sure he was done and said, “That’s it?”

He cracked a reluctant smile. “At one point, the only person I talked to for weeks was Snape. The guy’s been good to me, but he should not be anyone’s first line of defense against depression.”

She laughed, but the look on her face was speculative. “Seriously, though, Draco. Is all of that it?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

“Hell, yes. That would take anyone down. We just get the impression that maybe there’s more to it than that.”

Neville nodded.

He had to admit that he’d been having a hard time before he’d fled to Grimmauld Place. It truly had been a massively spectacular failure of a year.

Potter had not been what broke him. He knew that—he wasn’t someone who would ever cave up and lose his will to live because of a stupid breakup, however much in love he’d been. He just fucking _refused_ to give Potter the satisfaction.

The problem was dealing with Potter on top of all of that other crap. And having to deal with all of it while being forced to hide alone in a single room indefinitely? He couldn’t even get firewhiskey. A recipe for disaster for anyone’s mental health.

Having first Neville and now Ginny around made everything so much more bearable, not least of which because Neville had known Draco needed a pet mouse to love him when Neville wasn’t there, and Ginny at least knew how to talk about Quidditch and was free with hugs.

But as much as he liked and trusted them, they were Potter’s friends first. They’d been in the same House for years, been to the Ministry of Magic together, been in the D.A. together. They talked about Potter, Granger and Weasel frequently, with real worry and affection in their voices. Whatever feelings of companionship they’d developed for Draco couldn’t possibly compare, and they might even blame him for the way everything had fallen out.

So even though part of him thought he owed them the story, he suppressed the guilt he felt at being a bad friend, (imagine that, Draco feeling guilt about how he treated a friend—would wonders never cease?) he kept his mouth shut.

“That’s not all,” Draco said quietly. “But I don’t want to talk about the rest.”

“You worried we won’t like you anymore?” Neville asked.

Draco’s head lifted too sharply, giving him away, and Ginny’s canny brown eyes narrowed.

“Ah,” she said. “Well, when you decide you can trust us not to dump you in the dirt, you’ve only to say.”

He winced at her choice of words. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he said. “It’s that there are certain realities…about who I used to be and the people you care about and…some things can’t be changed. I don’t want to rock the boat, you know.”

“You don’t know that it will,” Neville pointed out.

“It will,” Draco said flatly. He could feel himself getting irritated. He gave Neville a beseeching look and the other boy nodded, putting a restraining hand on Ginny’s forearm when she opened her mouth to argue further.

Snape was still stopping by to deliver food on a regular basis; it was perhaps inevitable that he would bump into one of Draco’s new friends at some point. The first time he and Neville bumped into each other had been interesting. Neville turned bright red and stammered (Snape was the one person who could still make Neville revert, if only slightly, back to his previous insecurity), while the professor had simply given Draco an extremely warning glance and left without a word. Later, Snape sent him something saying that Neville could now be responsible for feeding Draco since he was there all the time anyway, and so it was that twice a week Neville picked up a big sack of food from the kitchens and brought it with him to the Room.

*

In late February, a month after Ginny had begun to come see Draco, she and Neville decided it was time to begin introducing him to the rest of the D.A.

The reasons for this were numerous: Draco had advanced knowledge of the sorts of dark curses, jinxes, and hexes that the students would feel comfortable using in a battle, as opposed to the nightmarish stuff the Carrows were teaching in Dark Arts. No one particularly wanted to rip someone’s lungs out, which had been the centerpiece of a lecture in class the previous week. Draco had already shown Ginny and Neville several ways to incapacitate attackers without killing, something that pleased them both. It was Dark magic, yes, but not too dark.

If that thought made Draco remember Potter calling him the king of half-assed evil, no one would know but him.

Also, it would be useful for the students to have access to the Room again, because things were getting downright dangerous in the halls, and punishments were getting more and more violent. Torture ceased to be rare. It would be dead useful to have a safe place where members of the D.A. could go safely. Sharing the room could only be done, however, if Draco’s presence wouldn’t be revealed to anyone who would turn him in to one side or the other.

The final reason that he agreed to take the risk was that as much as he liked hanging around with Neville and Ginny, they weren’t there but for a couple hours in the evening—they still couldn’t afford to spend too much time here or people would get suspicious. Filling the rest of his time with practicing spells, grading essays and reading got old fast. Draco needed other people to see and talk to, and if he had tasks to complete for the D.A., he would have still more distractions.

He thought far less about Potter when he was busy.

Seamus Finnegan was brought to the room next. He was hot-tempered and started giving Draco a good ration of shit before the door was closed behind him. Draco had done reasonably well at keeping his own mouth under control, so once Seamus had blown himself out, he’d settled right enough, reassured by Ginny’s and Neville’s faith as much as Draco’s reaction.

Then came Lavender Brown and Cho Chang and the Patil twins, all of them brought one at a time, all introduced slowly so that they could see that Draco wasn’t exactly who he had been. When Neville had very tentatively asked whether there were any other Slytherins who might be trustworthy, Draco had flatly denied it. Goyle and Parkinson he’d once considered actual friends, back before he’d known what a friend really was, and Zabini could be downright decent, but they all had family members who were supporters of the Dark Lord, and every last one of them would turn if the circumstances were hard enough. Even if he’d thought they might be willing to join them, he wouldn’t put them in a position where they had to choose between him and their families or consciences.

They had to be careful who they let in and when so no one would think it a good idea to turn Draco over to the Carrows. He made his first true convert outside of Ginny and Neville in Marietta Edgecombe, who had borne a splotchy insult across her face (Draco had been mildly impressed with Granger after learning the story behind it, and even missed her for a minute before remembering that she was on Potter’s side. The twit.). He’d realized it was a convoluted form of a Backfire Hex and got rid of it for her in less than twenty minutes. She’d burst into tears, scaring him a little, and then followed him around like a puppy and crowed about his talents and kindnesses to the sky for more than a week. Having everyone look at him as if he’d done something impressive and wonderful was a new experience for him. He’d liked it a great deal. It sort of made him want to do other nice things, just to get the feeling back.

For most of them, particularly the girls, whom Draco had never taken much time to harass, the fact that he was no longer with the Dark Lord was reason enough to give him one small chance—he hadn’t been nearly so awful to anyone who wasn’t Harry Potter, Hermione Granger or Ron Weasley, so there wasn’t a wealth of convoluted history to overcome. But people warmed to him with surprising speed, and it wasn’t long before they began to listen to him when he offered advice or options during D.A. meetings.

Once he’d mastered the extremely difficult Disillusionment Charm, Draco routinely went with them to commit random acts of havoc during the night. They cast jumping spells on the tables at which the Carrows sat. They set up mines full of jinxes just outside the portraits leading to their quarters. They painted limericks in praise of Muggles on the walls.

Draco’s whole-hearted assistance in these matters eased the tension about him still further.

And it helped that everyone loved Weasel 2.

Terry Boot and Ernie MacMillan built an elaborate maze of see-through tunnels onto the existing cage and Lavender Brown added a wheel for running. And Weasel 2 did run; the little mouse was a devil for it, and often Draco would fall asleep to the little squeak of the wheel spinning. It was a surprisingly comforting sound.

Not long after that, Lavender and Cho appropriated Draco’s cloak and added a pocket with built-in cushioning and barrier charms so that Draco could carry Weasel 2 around with him without risk of him getting lost or injured.

He did so frequently, and after a while, he even took the barrier charm off, so that Weasel 2 could climb up and ride on his shoulder if he wanted to. Which he did.

The girls found this absolutely adorable, and Draco had to admit, he was a little touched by the fact that Weasel 2 had made a little home there, particularly since the mouse didn’t do it with anyone else.

*

By mid-March, Draco had been living in the Room of Hidden Things for more than four months, long enough that Cho Chang had given him a haircut, he’d raced Seamus Finnegan around the room on broomsticks more times than he could count (and he won roughly three-quarters of the time) and let Lavender Brown talk him into trying on black leather pants. That last bit had been sort of fun actually, even if some of the boys had given him strange looks the first time he wore them around. He liked them. They went well with his coloring.

After that, the girls went a little haywire, and the fact that he was queer came out. No one seemed to give it more than a thought, (the ancient pureblood families with their strict rules of breeding and marriage being far more rigid than most of the people his age or anyone of mixed blood) and in fact, it made the boys feel a little bit better about the leather pants, as it seemed clear now that it wasn’t something any of the girls would expect them to do.

When Ginny put black eyeliner on him, every single female in the room sighed and made goopy faces at him until he washed it off. He kept that reaction in mind, just in case he ever made it out of the Room and back into the real world, where perhaps young queer men might just have the same reaction.

That night, thinking about those young queer men, he took his cock in his hand for the first time since he’d left Grimmauld. He stroked himself slowly, trying it out, and was halfway to a decent orgasm when the pictures in his head shifted from faceless naked boys into Potter’s far more familiar figure. He hesitated, thinking that this was a bad thing, and tried for a bit to switch back.

His mind had already decided what it wanted to think about, however. He found himself imagining Potter pushing him onto his stomach, pulling Draco’s arse into the air and pressing a gentle finger against his hole. Lube was pushed inside, and Potter began to slowly stretch him open. _You like that?_ Potter asked in a low voice, and Draco nodded in the dark even though no one would see him. The fingers went deep, curling, teasing, and Draco’s hand moved faster on his flesh, tugging and releasing. _You do like it,_ Potter’s voice whispered, deep and smug. He could feel Potter sitting up, lining up his hard cock. _Spread yourself open for me, Draco. Yes, open yourself to me. Let me fuck you. Let me do whatever I want. I’ll make it good. You’ll beg me before I’m done, beg me to fuck you and take you and hold you down and you’ll love every second of it like the dirty boy you are._ The hard cock thrust deeply, stretching him wide, making room inside him, possessing him and making him shudder. _You’d do anything to please me, wouldn’t you?_

“Yes,” Draco moaned, and came.

It took him hours to fall asleep that night, because a part of him _wanted_ that back desperately, and he couldn’t stop replaying it in his head.

The rest of him felt humiliated and profoundly ashamed. He kept hearing something else Potter had said to him: _Don’t you have any pride?_

In April, several students went home for Easter. Ginny Weasley went, and it was a sign of the depth of Draco’s developing friendship with her that he let her take Weasel 2 home with her to the Burrow to meet the rest of his ‘family,’ but only after a strict vow that she would protect him with her life. Almost immediately after she left, he missed the little mouse desperately.

Neville had refused to return to his grandmother’s home for the holidays. He said that he wanted more time to work, but it was pretty clear that he simply didn’t want to leave Draco at Hogwarts alone. Draco merely smiled at the news, although it made him realize that the round-faced boy was the best friend he’d ever had.

*

Several people did not return after the Easter hols, near the end of April, Ginny Weasley and Weasel 2 among them.

“Here,” Neville said a few days later. “From Ginny, via my grandmother, via Lupin, and who knows who the bloody hell else.”

 

_D,_

_I feel a right shit at the moment. We’ve had to run for it. Abandoned our house and everything, and I daren’t come back to Hogwarts. I’ve still got Weasel 2, and he’s perfectly well, I swear. If anything, the little bugger’s been getting a bit pudgy and full of himself with all the treats and attention. I wanted to see what you’d like me to do about it. I’m in a safe place, so he’ll be fine if he stays here, but if you’d rather, I can see about figuring a way to get him back to you. I reckon I can drop into Hogsmeade if you or a member of the D.A. can meet me there. Or perhaps I can try to slip him to a teacher? Again, I feel a proper bastard. If it helps, I can tell he misses you. I got him a wheel and he refuses to run on it. Just tell me what you want to do._

_G_

He thought about it for a while. He missed the little critter an embarrassing amount, and more than a few times he’d had trouble falling asleep without the sound of the wheel turning. But he didn’t like the idea of putting Ginny in danger just for that, and besides, if she did get caught, that wouldn’t do Weasel 2 any good either.

He sent a return letter, back via the same chain that the first one had traveled.

 

_Proper Bastard,_

_Keep him with you and keep him healthy. Btw, as punishment, I’m wearing black eyeliner every day for a month now that you can’t see it. Suffer. But while you’re taking care of him, take care of yourself as well, all right? I refuse to lose rodents of any kind._

_Also in leather pants,_

_D_

That afternoon, Lavender cried about Ernie MacMillan not returning—she had quite a crush. Draco pulled her into his arms and let her sob for half an hour, and only realized after that he hadn’t minded it at all. In fact, the sight of her soft, pretty face all blotchy and stricken had made something inside him hurt. He knew what that felt like to miss someone that desperately. And she had been kind to him, and kissed him on the cheek once when he said something cute, and she squealed sometimes with excitement when she had something she wanted to tell him, and it was not a hardship at all to hold her and say soothing things.

“I think it’s working. I’m turning into a nicer person,” he confessed to Neville later.

“Still not as nice as me,” Neville said, grinning.

Draco rolled his eyes. “No one’s as nice as you, dope. You steal mice to protect them from snakes. You adopt pathetic ex-Death Eaters. You tell Hannah Abbot that listening to her talk for hours about Arithmancy is interesting when really it’s fatally boring. There’s something seriously wrong with you, mate.”

*

The next day, he tried to cast the Patronus Charm for what he was sure would be the hundredth useless time, and he’d decided to try a new memory, one of the whole D.A. looking at him, impressed and warmly accepting, just after he’d removed Marietta’s hex, just for the hell of it. So far, no matter what memory he picked, he didn’t seem able to get Potter out of his head enough to make it happen.

But this time it worked.

The others set up a loud cheer, coming to pat him on the shoulder and praise him for managing it after months of struggling. Then they saw his face and stopped short.

He stared at the ghostly form, awed and shocked and horrified all at once, and thought, _Fuck you, Potter. Fuck you._

And then he began to cry, and Neville sat beside him while Cho and Lavender petted his hair. He couldn’t tell them why the sight of the Patronus had done this to him, but Neville had seen him during his darkest days, when he’d stared into the fire for hours and slept half the day away. Neville, at least, suspected that the two things were related, but Draco couldn’t explain. He didn’t have the words.

*

The morning of the second of May arrived.

By this time, much of the D.A. was living in the Room with him, sleeping in hammocks and listening to the wireless, all chased out of the school proper by vengeful Carrows. Others wandered in during breaks between classes or hung out before or after meetings.

Draco was fully one of the group now, all reservations about him vanished, all the small kindnesses of friendship extended.

It was rather easy, it turned out, to return a kindness. And to offer one freely.

Things had settled, somehow, into a kind of superficial cheerfulness for Draco. He smiled, he laughed, he let the girls steal hugs (being queer got him more attention from girls than he’d ever gotten while people thought he was straight, for some bizarre reason), he played Exploding Snap and Wizard’s Chess, and helped people practice jinxes and hexes and charms.

He was still grading, and by now most, if not all, of the students had come to expect that their essays should not be written with the Carrows’ viewpoints in mind so much as with a gentle tempering to please Draco. He was slightly more careful with the Slytherins, but even now that he was in charge of the second and third years as well as the firsties, the kids were all still young enough not to risk pissing off the Carrows over something as mild as a discrepancy between lecture and homework.

His comments got more relaxed, sometimes even introspective on the subject at hand, and he graded so leniently that anything short of dangerous ineptitude rated high marks. He figured the students had enough to put up with just by taking class with those two psychos already, so what did it matter if everyone got E’s? Particularly since Draco was one hundred percent certain that their grades were not being recorded anyway.

A sort of little rebellion, but one that actually worked to help make people better. He was good at it, and he told Neville that he enjoyed it.

And sometimes, just sometimes, he was able to pretend that this outward happiness reflected the reality inside of him.

That was when he could imagine that his parents had cared for him enough to keep their home a refuge and to forbid him to take the Mark instead of requiring it. No father to threaten murder should they meet again. Maybe in that world he would never have known what it was to have red eyes fix on him lustfully.

He could imagine a time and place in which he’d never loved Harry Potter or known what it was like to be loved by him in return. No sweet kisses or exasperated banter or bossy ultimatums given and upheld with spankings that ended in hot bouts of fucking that went on until Draco was unraveling and beyond thought, moving beneath the body of the boy he craved like air.

He told himself he could do without the solemn goodness and righteous anger lurking behind green eyes, traits which hinted at a world where people did the decent thing simply because it was decent.

But the reality always came back, along with the memories, along with the cavernous, crushing ache.

He began to think the ache would never go away, unlike the boy who’d caused it. He resigned himself to it. Potter was not coming back.

Except then the bastard did.

*

Draco was out with a group of the others wandering the halls with the intention of causing trouble. They hadn’t been gone long, though, when Seamus Finnegan caught up, grabbed Draco and told them all that they had to get back to the Room _right now_ because their brains were all going to explode.

Or something to that effect, because the kid turned into a garbled mess when he talked fast. It was sort of adorable, actually, in a childish sort of way.

Draco stepped inside, moved past a couple others to see just what it was that was so important and saw green eyes.

The air abruptly left the room.

He rushed forward, his every instinct blindly telling him to get closer, only to drive to a stop inches away. Conversation stopped abruptly, and the two of them looked at each other for a long moment in a sort of strange bubble of silence. Draco felt a million things tumbling together inside of him at once, all of which were no doubt scrambling across his face: wonder at seeing Potter there, in the flesh, joy, more than a little fury, embarrassment that after all this time and the way it had ended he would still run up to see him as if Potter might actually give a shit, and pain. A lot of pain, actually.

Then his head cleared a little.

What the fuck was wrong with him, running up here like this? He didn’t need this. He didn’t want this. He remembered what it had felt like, lying on that bed that last day, freshly fucked (face down, no less, because Potter couldn’t even _keep it up_ , apparently, if he knew it was Draco he was fucking) and crying, only to have Potter tell him to get out before he’d even caught his breath.

His heart hardened, and what very well might have been the beginnings of hate filled him.

Just as he was about to step back, Potter touched him, only a gentle hand to his chin, keeping him in place and lifting his face for perusal for a good ten seconds. Draco was trapped by that touch, glaring and furious and cold, and he wondered if Potter saw all of that before releasing him. But release him he did, and with the air of someone dismissing a thing completely.

That was it? That was all he got? That _bastard._

“Wait,” Draco said very quietly, in an effort to keep control.

“Not now,” Potter said, firm and final.

Draco sucked in air and stepped back. So that was it. All right, then. He walked slightly to one side, looking not to Potter, but to Neville, who was watching him with a shocked expression.

Well, the secret of the straw that broke his back was out, Draco thought, and let out a joyless chuckle.

For a very brief time, all he could do was focus on pulling himself together. It had been months, he told himself. He was not the boy he’d been when Potter kicked him out. He was a better person now, he had friends, and goals. He had a fucking army.

He refused to simply crawl and forgive and beg; he had not bettered himself to impress Potter or win him back. He had bettered himself so he would not need Potter anymore to be happy.

It hadn’t worked exactly, but so the fuck what? It _would._ He just needed to get the hell away from the bespectacled git and live his own damn life.

Maybe he would see if Neville and Ginny wanted to share a flat when the war was over.

He cued back in then; Potter was talking about needing to find something and not telling anyone why, and Draco figured it had something to do with a horcrux. The portrait opened, and Luna and Dean were there, and then a couple more faces arrived, some he recognized, some he didn’t, a few more Weasleys, some of whom gave him measuring glances and nods. Ginny was suddenly there, hugging her brother and Hermione and Potter, and then she abandoned the three of them while her brother was mid-sentence because she’d seen Draco. She all but flew into his arms, pressing a kiss to his cheek as she whispered, “He’s safe and sound, I built him a big garden so there’s plenty of food and there’s a barrier so he can’t get out, and his wheel is there and it’s perfect and the eyeliner is to fucking die for.”

When Draco pulled back he was grinning crookedly, and he patted her on the bottom affectionately. “You’re good with low creatures.”

“You would know,” she replied cheekily.

Potter, Granger, and Weasel were staring at them like they’d grown second heads, but Draco looked away. He’d spent time with them, worked with them, and still they thought he wasn’t capable of being liked. Kind of offensive, really. He’d found a buried part of himself over the months, a part that he liked, the part that could be kind and decent and take risks for the right thing. He didn’t owe the dipshit twins or Potter a fucking thing, and their slack-jawed surprise just made him shake his head.

There was conversation about a diadem and a bunch of other crap, and Potter was going, about to walk out the door, and Draco thought _I can do this, see, I’m used to him not wanting me now, and I don’t want him either_ and then, beyond all reason and rationality, Potter turned away from Luna, strode determinedly through the crowd back to Draco, cupped his jaw with a hard hand and yanked him into a kiss.

Draco froze; his lips trembled open in shock, and Potter slanted his head, taking every advantage. His lips were soft, his tongue demanding, his other hand coming to splay in that spot between lower back and arse, tugging him so very close. Draco couldn’t think. He didn’t quite kiss back—some part of him wouldn’t allow that—but he stood still under the shock of it, the sudden lash of desire, forced to balance himself by putting his hands on Potter’s shoulders.

Then the ache inside him boiled over, and he shoved Potter away.

“No. You crushed me,” he ground out. “You don’t get to kiss me now.”

Potter stared at him, his chest heaving. His face was expressionless, eyes hard and intent. He raised his hand slowly, and his fingertips brushed over Draco’s cheek with utmost gentleness.

Draco swallowed. Everything in him begged him to throw himself back into Potter’s arms. Everything in him except for the ache, which wasn’t just grief, but rage and resentment as well. And that part of him refused to let him move.

“I know,” Potter said. “I don’t…I don’t want this. Not…not like…fuck.”

Then Potter was turning, stalking back toward Luna, and leaving the Room in absolute silence behind him. Mouths had dropped open, eyes were wide, no one moved. The sight of the Savior kissing a former Death Eater had apparently broken brains.

Neville came to his side. “Are you all right?”

“No,” he said. He heaved a deep breath. “I wish he would make up his fucking mind and quit jerking me around. But there’s things to do, yeah?” He glanced around, saw people getting ready to go, and thought of something. “Oi, you lot! Trust Snape. Pass the word to the teachers. Trust Snape. He’s on our side, I swear it.”

For the second time in less than two minutes, everyone was staring at him at him with open-mouths.

Neville exchanged a look with Draco, and without doubt or hesitation, he called, “He is. Think about how many times he’s intervened with the Carrows or given ridiculous punishments like spending time with Hagrid.”

“He’s been helping Potter all along,” Draco continued. His chest, which had been tight with anger and hurt, relaxed a little at the implicit, unquestioned trust in Neville’s support.

“That’s right,” Granger shouted, and even Weasel nodded, although he looked rather sour about it.

People grumbled, but they trusted Neville thoroughly by now, and apparently Granger’s and Weasel’s word was virtually as good as Potter’s when it came down to it.

“So, you and Harry?” Neville asked.

“For a while. There was a whole…magical…thing. But when he realized just who he was with, he cut me loose. In sort of a humiliating and cold way, actually. I guess I’m partially to blame for the break-up sex, but the rest of it was kind of fucked up.”

Neville nodded. “Which resulted in lots of sleeping and temper tantrums and secrets that you kept from people who were Harry’s friends, too.”

“Yeah.” Draco paused. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Neville, really. I wanted to, you’ve got to believe me. I think I would’ve felt a lot better. But I didn’t want you to have to listen to me say bad things about someone you know, and I would never ask you not to be loyal to him or think—”

“Listen to you. You’ve come a long way.” Neville smiled at him. “I’m proud of you, Draco.”

Draco started. “I don’t think anyone’s ever told me that before,” he said dumbly.

Neville sighed. “That explains a lot about your ridiculous need for attention,” he said.

*

More people arrived, and the din in the Room grew. Eventually Potter came back, and Snape was with him, Luna trailing cheerfully behind. They were talking together in low, intense voices—arguing, most probably.

Countless Weasleys began to argue loudly (in all honesty, the only ones Draco could tell apart were Ginny and Weasel, so what did it really matter which ones were doing what?). And then people were leaving, en masse.

Draco got handshakes and hugs from a dozen people, a whispered plea to be safe from Neville, and a cherry lip-balm scented kiss on the cheek from Lavender.

When it seemed Ginny was to be left alone in the Room after everyone else had gone, Draco paused and went to her, watching the others begin to troop out of the door.

“Are you actually going to stay here?” he asked curiously.

She looked up at him, face wet with angry tears. “They told me to. To keep me safe. That’s what parents do, isn’t it?”

“My parents signed me up to be a Death Eater and my father has sworn to kill me if he sees me again. I don’t really know what parents do.”

“Fuck.”

“A bit.” He nudged her shoulder. “I would stay with you, but…”

“But they might need you.”

“There’s that. And I think I need to do something right for once.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“If you don’t get killed, they’ll forgive you. If you do get killed, they’ll still forgive you. It’ll just take longer, and you won’t have to hear about it. If you live but save someone’s life, they’ll build a statue of you wearing a toga and playing the lute.”

She laughed, a teary sound. “Very practical of you to say.”

“It’s a Slytherin trait.”

“Everyone I love is out there right now.”

“Except for me, because I’m here,” Draco prompted, making her laugh again.

“Except for you.” She got up. “Oh, what the hell. If I die and you live, tell them it was because I couldn’t bear the idea that one of them might have died when I could’ve been able to stop it.”

“Sure. That’s not arrogant at all.”

“And if you die and I live…should I tell Harry anything?” She was watching him very carefully.

Draco hesitated. “Tell him I love him,” he whispered, and her face twisted. He cleared his throat. “And that he’s a fucking bastard. Don’t forget that part, Gin, it’s important. Then tell yourself and Neville that you’re the best friends I’ve ever had.” She sank into his arms, sniffling.

“And tell Lavender that she is never to crimp her hair again.”

She laughed. “Ditto to that last one if I die. There are some truths that must be told.”

They walked out of the Room together.

*

Seeing as they were both persona non grata, they decided to hang out in the Entrance Hall and eavesdrop. He cringed with the others as they heard the Dark Lord’s message reverberate painfully through their heads. Draco shook his head as he heard Parkinson scream out for Potter’s head. “Little bitch,” he said, amused and a little fond, and Ginny shot him a peculiar look.

“It’s just so…Pansy,” he whispered, by way of explanation. “It gets to be sort of cute if you know her long enough.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Ginny replied dryly.

They slid to one side as the Slytherins accompanied Filch out of the Great Hall, and then Draco whispered to Ginny that he was going to trail behind them for when they acted up.

“How do you know they will?”

“That’s my House,” he said simply.

He took her hand, squeezed it once, and took off.

He _did_ know his House. They’d been walking for some time and were nearly to the evacuation point when one of the older students abruptly tackled Pomfrey so fast that he got Pomfrey’s wand out of her hand before she hit the ground. Three other students immediately turned on Filch.

Draco said, “ _Expelliarmus,”_ which brought Pomfrey’s wand to him and knocked Villers back a few feet, and then he almost instantly followed that with “ _Protego,”_ which gave him the inimitable pleasure of seeing Parkinson, Meade, and Bronn slam to a halt and fall on their arses.

All that dueling practice had made him quicker, he thought.

“That’s not a great idea,” he said, stepping out of the shadows.

“Malfoy?” Parkinson said. She looked confused—not good on her bulldog face.

“Let me draw it out for you, Pans. If you leave now and He wins, you have the excuse that you were forced to leave against your will by more powerful teachers, so you’re on the winning side without risking your lives. If you leave now and He loses, you’re also on the winning side without risking your lives. You stay, and you’ve got a good chance of ending up dead or in Azkaban.”

It took a few seconds while they considered this, but then, almost as one, the Slytherins turned and proceeded quietly to the evacuation point. He’d figured that was all it would take; Slytherins—at least those who were sympathetic to the kind of mind garbage that the Dark Lord spouted—could always be counted on to act in their own best interests.

He smiled a little when he realized he wasn’t one of them anymore.

Draco and Filch helped Madam Pomfrey up, and he gave her back her wand. She opened her mouth, probably to thank him, but shock kept her from getting the words out. Filch gave Draco a slight nod, as if he realized how close he’d come to being helpless at the feet of vicious teenagers who loathed him.

Draco nodded as well and began the long trek back up to the castle, passing the startled groups of little Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors who had been close enough to see the confrontation.

Well, even if that was all he did tonight, at least he’d done _something_.

*

The Great Hall was empty when he returned and Ginny was gone, but he could hear people nearby yelling. The fight had begun.

Draco headed in the general direction of the courtyard, looking for trouble, pausing at corners to glance around first, listening for enemies where the way seemed empty. He passed the occasional students, but fortunately, each one that he didn’t know was accompanied by a member of the D.A. who kept Draco from getting attacked. He stopped occasionally to hide if he was outnumbered or didn’t recognize a particular Death Eater—some of them were tough enough that he wouldn’t stand much of a chance, and getting taken out this early wouldn’t do his side any good either. But twice he came across familiar masks he knew and didn’t mind tangling with. He spent a good ten minutes trading curses with Travers, who didn’t have great skill at dueling but was entirely talented when it came to using cover. Draco knew this from previous experience in the field with the man, and finally took his time to slip down a side passage and circle around so he could come up behind. He laid Travers out with a _Stupefy_ and bound him tightly before hauling him out of the way where no stray Death Eaters would come across him and wake him up. A soldier down was only a soldier down if he wasn’t revived.

The second time, he smelled smoke first. Then he heard yells. And then the unmistakable sound of dueling. He hurried forward.

Around one corner. Around a next. The thick, black scent of fire was getting more potent. He glanced out a window that overlooked the main courtyard and did a double-take. Several Death Eaters were working together to battle an immense statue wielding a sword.

 _You don’t see that every day,_ he thought, startled into banalities. He went forward once more, stopped at the next intersection, glanced around the corner quickly, and then did _another_ double-take.

Two Weasleys were dueling wildly against two Death Eaters. One was clearly Rookwood—he liked to wear his robe far too long in the hopes it would imitate Snape’s robe’s far more effective and dramatic way of moving. The other Draco didn’t recognize until his mask slipped, revealing Thicknesse. The prat.

And beyond, looking filthy and covered in ash, were Potter, Granger and Weasel. They were hurrying forward, and Draco sank back, taking a breath. It would be cowardly to run just because he didn’t want to see Potter. The excuse that five on two meant he clearly wasn’t needed was exactly that: an excuse.

So he would help.

He turned, and out of the corner of his eye, just out in the courtyard, he saw the Death Eaters pausing. They moved in tandem, bringing their wands down in the direction of the statue.

Distantly, he heard one Weasley shout about joking, which seemed a stupid thing to concentrate on just at the moment. And then he saw all three Death Eaters shout something at the same time.

With a horrid, sinking feeling, Draco darted around the corner and cast the strongest barrier charm at the wall that he possibly could.

Just in time, apparently.

Part of the statue struck the wall with such force that the floor vibrated. Big chunks of stone and wood flew, and Draco, running as fast as he could toward the mess, was thrown aside with the others. He lost a few seconds, and only came truly conscious when he saw Rookwood trying to get up while gripping the far wall with one hand and holding his wand awkwardly with the other.

There was a ringing in his ears, and he climbed carefully to his feet, wobbly but ready to fight, only to hear a shout of _“Expelliarmus.”_

His wand was yanked away and he was thrown back onto the ground. That voice was all too familiar. “Potter, you fuck, you missed!” he yelled.

More curses flew, and Draco rolled out of the way, putting his back to the wall and staring up through a haze of dust. Potter and Rookwood and one of the Weasleys were dueling until Rookwood took something nasty directly in the face and went down hard.

And then there was another yell, one of very real fear.

“Fred!”

Bodies were moving, and Draco ran up, wondering what the hell had happened.

“Is he?” That was Granger, high-pitched and scared.

“No,” Weasel said. “No, he’s alive. But Merlin, he’s hurt. We’ve got to get him out of here. He was standing in the worst possible place for it when whatever it was hit the wall. Hermione, can you…”

Potter was staring at Draco.

“Nice aim,” Draco told him sourly, and turned away to look for his wand. There was rubble every-damn-where and it was dark and there was crap in the air and he couldn’t see _anything._

Meanwhile, Granger was casting every healing spell she could think of, throwing everything she had.

“That’s all I can do,” she said finally, rocking back on her heels. “But he needs to see a real healer. Fast.”

Weasel was already casting _Mobilicorpus._

“I’ll take him,” the other uninjured Weasley said. “I’ll get him out.”

“Go,” Weasel said firmly, and then the two unfamiliar Weasleys were heading down the corridor, one skinny and tall and one unconscious and bleeding, floating creepily beside the other.

“Someone cast a Lumos, please,” Draco said. Weasel did so without otherwise responding, and Draco continued to shift through the mess.

“He’ll be all right,” Granger told Weasel.

“I know,” he replied. “But…he just looked so…hurt.”

“Did you see where my wand went?” Draco asked Potter, who slowly shook his head, still staring at him. It was making Draco self-conscious.

Weasel moved his arm a little while he talked, not paying attention, and Draco reached up and forced his hand still so he could see what he was doing. But his wand was nowhere.

“Damn,” he whispered.

“The snake,” Granger said. She looked exhausted.

Potter was _still_ just staring at him.

Weasel took a last glance in the direction of his brothers, then began to walk away, back the way they’d come. Then he paused for a split second to turn to Draco, grab the back of his neck, and pull him into a very brief hug. “I take back most of the mean things I ever said about you,” he said into Draco’s ear. He let him go, flashed a grin, and said, “Not all. But most.”

Then he and Granger were hurrying away.

Draco continued to search for his wand amidst the rubble, this time in near-darkness. Only the ambient light from the far corridor and the moonlight through the hole in the wall gave him anything to see by. His eyes ran over stone and wood. Nothing. Fuck.

“You saved his life,” Potter said.

“Maybe.” Where the hell could it be? He tried to move rocks, but they were far too heavy. Where was it?

“You did. That spot…that’s where most of the wreckage went. If you hadn’t blocked so much of it…you saved him.”

There were shouts, and explosions, and with panic sprouting, he finally reached down and grabbed Rookwood’s fallen wand. At least he would be armed while he searched for his own.

“We’ll never know. You want to help me out here, Potter?”

He looked up and froze. All Draco could do was blink at the expression on Potter’s face. Misery. That was the only word for it. _Don’t say anything,_ he thought silently. _Please. I can’t afford to break down now._

“I’m sorry,” Potter said. “I—”

Draco ran.

*

Draco saw many things that night. He saw acromantula clambering through holes in the walls and above tumbled furniture. He literally ran into Lavender, and she shrieked his name to get him to turn, and when he did, he saw a werewolf barreling toward them.

“He won’t go down,” she cried.

“Together,” Draco yelled, remembering the three Death Eaters working in tandem to throw an immense statue.

In unison they screamed, “ _Stupefy.”_

They all went down in a pile, Draco and Lavender underneath a massive weight, but the weight wasn’t moving. They shoved and kicked, and soon were free.

“Are you bit?” he asked.

“No. You?”

He shook his head.

“Draco,” she said, looking at him in awe, as if she’d only just realized what had happened. “You saved my life.”

“Well, you helped,” he pointed out.

“You did,” she insisted.

“Never crimp your hair again, and we’ll consider ourselves even.”

“Okay.” She looked at him more closely, swiped a thumb just under his eye. “Your eyeliner was running.”

He nodded. “That’s the kind of day I’m having.”

She grinned at him and ran off.

He saw a wave of Snape’s wand throw a pink-haired woman into the werewolf Professor, nearly in time to save them, very nearly, but Draco saw a hand fly through the air and knew that they had not gotten away untouched.

Snape slid to one side, cast again, a curse this time, directly into the face of a shocked Death Eater, no doubt wondering why Snape had helped Order members. The Death Eater fell hard.

Snape stared down at the other professor, who stared back, their faces weighty and full of some meaning that Draco couldn’t discern as the woman began to move with grim hurry, conjuring a rope to cut off the blood flow from the professor’s severed limb. Then Snape was gone in a snap of robes and Draco was stumbling to his professor’s side. He tore off his cloak—Weasel 2 would have to get another pocket—and used his stolen wand to transfigure bandages. It was bloody difficult; the wand did not care much for him.

Once more he cursed Potter for his stupid, bespectacled, Gryffindor aim.

The professor was shaking, staring at the spot where he would’ve landed.

“He saved us,” he babbled, clearly going into shock. “He really saved us.”

The woman rubbed at his forehead soothingly even as she murmured _Mobilicorpus._

“The infirmary,” Draco said, just done wrapping the wound tightly with the cloak-bandages and more ropes while fighting Rookwood’s wand all the way. “ _Dammit._ They’ll have blood-replenishing potion. You might have to cauterize it.”

“Yeah,” she said, half-panicked, barely listening. Then she ran off, floating her injured partner behind her.

Parvati Patil saved him from an acromantula; a well-placed (and exceedingly well-timed) _Reducto_ took down part of a wall, crushing the creature beneath nearly flat. She nodded once when he gasped his thanks before vanishing into the darkness.

He caught glimpses of Ginny, of Neville, of Seamus, all of them fighting, all of them shooting curses and jinxes, and he nearly went down twice more, only to be saved by random Order members and classmates, and he thought he saved others too, although in the havoc it was hard to be sure.

It would have been terrifying if his brain had time to process any of it. But every time he started to realize how close he’d come to one danger or another, something else sprang up and he had no choice but to stop thinking and simply react.

He glanced over a half-collapsed gate into the courtyard and saw Potter down below.

Then a mighty hand came out of _nowhere_ , not three feet away from where he stood, shattering glass and crumpling wood, as a giant reached past him and grabbed someone Draco hadn’t even seen: Ellers, the Death Eater who had first been sent to negotiate with the giants and get them on the Dark Lord’s side. The giant obviously didn’t recognize that he had grasped one of his own comrades, let alone the man who’d recruited him, because he squeezed the struggling man tightly, and then the Death Eater was yanked back through the hole and flung into the air with a scream before the giant lumbered away.

Draco trembled where he stood and thought that he might have witnessed an example of situational irony, but he couldn’t be sure, because that kind of irony was fucking complicated and a giant had just hauled someone out of the window right beside him and his brain wasn’t quite working.

Then, suddenly it was, because he could see Potter and Granger and Weasel through the hole, and a wall of Dementors were approaching.

Draco ran. He tripped down a short flight of stairs and found Seamus and Ernie on the way, shouting at them to come. Luna was beside him from who-knew-where. He thought of the moment when Harry had turned back to him in the Room of Hidden things and kissed him, free of the potion and of his own free will _,_ and the wand in his hand fell in line because he wouldn’t accept anything less as he yelled, _“Expecto Patronum!”_

His Patronus burst free, joined seconds later by a hare, a boar and a fox.

The Dementors fell back.

Draco didn’t stay. He immediately doubled back, afraid of what it meant that the thought of Potter made him so happy, even after how it had ended.

 _I’m sorry_ , Potter had said. Sorry for what? That he’d cost Draco his wand? That Potter had kissed him? That he’d made Draco leave?

Then he remembered something else Potter had said once. _Are you trying to make me think you’re pathetic?_

Draco shook himself and fought on.

*

When Voldemort spoke again to the school, giving them a break and telling Potter to sacrifice himself, Draco felt a thread of worry skate through him.

“Don’t be stupid, Potter,” he whispered. He sank to the floor, breathing hard, his head pounding, his arms and legs refusing to move through sheer exhaustion. “Don’t you dare.”

Time passed. First, he had a pee and washed some of the dust and blood off of his face and hands. He helped move bodies. He cleaned wounds. When he got a second, he went back upstairs to look for his wand, this time with Luna and Seamus beside him to help. They lit the whole hallway up, cast locator charms and moved countless stones, but eventually the truth couldn’t be denied.

His wand wasn’t there.

So they went back down and he moved more bodies and cleaned more wounds.

At one point he came across a boy in Gryffindor robes who looked far too young to be here and was vaguely familiar. He thought about it for a second, then remembered that the kid had followed Potter around for a while years back. Draco had made fun of him.

He picked the smaller form up in his arms and carried him inside rather than using magic.

 _Sorry,_ he thought, setting the boy down very carefully between two other dead students he didn’t recognize.

Then he went back outside to look for more.

*

Draco heard McGonagall first. Her scream sent chills down his back. He forced himself to his feet, and Neville and Ginny rose with him, all of them looking out over the courtyard to where a strange procession had formed. He saw his father, dusty and windblown, and his mother, whose eyes quickly surveyed the courtyard only to come to a rest on him. And in front, now only twenty feet from the crowd in which Draco waited, right beside the red-eyed, gray-robed Voldemort, stood the large figure of Hagrid, who was holding something in his arms…

He heard other voices now, a compilation of _Harry!_ and _No!_

Draco didn’t shout anything. He’d stopped breathing. His legs gave out, and Neville grabbed him. Barely. Then Ginny was there on his other side, tears falling down her filthy face, steadying him further as he found his feet once more. Dimly he was aware of Voldemort talking, of people yelling. He couldn’t seem to pull his eyes from Potter.

Neville continued to hold him up, and he stayed by Draco’s side, his friend, and Ginny on the other side, also his friend, and Draco had never felt more alone, because Potter was dead.

The high, cold voice was talking again, and then people were turning to look at Draco.

“Young Malfoy,” Voldemort said loudly, and Draco got the sense it wasn’t the first time. He redirected his gaze from Potter to Voldemort. “You’ve been quite disrespectful to the Mark on your arm. And after all your promises.”

Draco said nothing. What did it matter now?

“You’ve betrayed me.”

Voldemort waited, but Draco still didn’t respond, so he kept speaking. “You betrayed your family.”

Draco just blinked at him, and Voldemort seemed to get impatient.

“Let me be clear. You are mine. Where once I would have waited for your willingness, now you shall have no such fortune. I have won, and you will bleed beneath me this night. I will ruin you, young Malfoy, tear you open and hear you beg and I will give you no quarter. That is what your betrayal will cost you. Your innocence.”

Ginny shuddered a little beside him, but Draco laughed. It was perhaps an ugly, unsettling sound, because Neville flinched. But once he started, it truly did seem legitimately funny. Maybe it was another case of situational irony. Maybe it was just fucked up. Whatever it was, it was perfect. His laughter fell away; he wanted Voldemort to hear every word of this.

“I’m not innocent anymore,” Draco said. His words were caught in the _Sonorus_ spell that Voldemort had cast and were carried to every ear in the place.

Voldemort’s sadistic grin faltered. His eyes narrowed.

“Harry Potter started fucking me nine months ago.”

The entire courtyard was silent.

“He fucked me a lot, actually,” he added, twisting the knife just as his lips twisted into his own version of a sadistic grin. “In a lot of different ways.”

The crowd was very still. Voldemort was vibrating where he stood, his expression terrible, his wand twitching in his hand.

“And he was _good_ ,” Draco yelled. “He beat you to it and I loved every second of it, you reptile-looking fuck!”

Voldemort shot a spell at him that Ginny and Neville both countered with a Shield Charm. Good thing, because Draco was laughing and crying at the same time, and had no ability to do anything to protect himself.

And others were laughing at Voldemort too. It was bizarre, and it just made him laugh harder until the tears came faster and he couldn’t laugh anymore because he couldn’t breathe.

Then Neville was shoving him aside.

For a second Draco was confused. Voldemort was too. He didn’t seem to know where to put his attention—on Draco, who had fallen quiet and was now sobbing silently into Ginny’s hair, or on Neville, who approached without fear.

Draco lost track of the conversation behind him, eaten up by the red, rioting pain inside him. At least, he lost track until there was a crash and the sound of broken glass and the sound of screams, and the smell of something burning, and Ginny yelled, “Neville!”

Then came a roar of fury, a roar Draco recognized. It was the one Voldemort gave when someone was about to die for displeasing him. But when Draco lifted his head, he didn’t see death. He saw chaos.

People were fighting again, and for a heartbeat, Draco didn’t care. He was carved up. He had nothing left. Then a curse struck the wall just beside Ginny’s head, and he found he might have a little more after all.

War unleashed around him, but something had changed. They’d laughed at Voldemort together; Neville had spoken words about Harry being their heart. The attitude had shifted.

They were winning.

He shot curses and sent hexes and shoved people out of the way of the same, and then there was hardly anyone left to fight.

The sky had begun to lighten; dawn was approaching fast. Draco watched Snape and Voldemort dueling—that was a nasty piece of work, and he wasn’t the only one who found that there was time and reason to stop and stare. Snape was just keeping up, throwing curses so dark Draco would never dare, and it gave others the chance to finish their own battles. There was a mad cackle that stole his attention briefly. Aunt Bella fell beneath the wand of a Weasley (the only way Bella could’ve been more offended would be if Granger had done it, but a blood traitor was pretty fucking bad. Draco found he didn’t mind in the least).

Then he heard the roar of rage once more as Voldemort saw that she’d fallen. He shot a curse at Snape that forced the professor to fling himself to the side for cover, and in the next second, Voldemort had turned on the Weasley mother. Virtually every single body in the room shifted, moving to intercede, but they would all be too late.

Except they weren’t. Something stopped the curse, and then Draco was falling, landing hard on his knees, because Harry was there, out of nowhere, alive and breathing and facing Voldemort down without a hint of fear in his face.

Snape, standing once more, glanced at him. The two exchanged a look and Snape gave a slight nod, yielding the fight and walking away.

And Harry stood in the courtyard across from a demon, holding what looked very much like Draco’s wand in his hand, and began to speak.

He was magnificent.

*

After, when it was still, Draco sat beside Neville and Luna, numb from too many hours of shock and terror and pain. He watched Ginny with her family, intrigued by the closeness he saw, and wondered at his own stupidity that he had ever thought the Weasleys less than the Malfoys.

As if she’d heard him and meant to confirm his thoughts, his mother found him at that point. Her blonde hair was snarled, her robes dirty, her fingernails torn.

She looked at him for a moment, and then pulled him into her arms. It was sort of awkward, but he put his head on her shoulder anyway. Then she pulled away and gave him a tired smile.

“We’re going,” she said. “If it was just me, Draco…I’d ask you to come, but he’s not…”

“It’s okay.”

“I don’t think we’ll be returning to England, so the Manor is yours, of course. I’d ask that you not cut off my allowance if the Ministry grants you full legal ownership. I can keep your father from coming for you outright, I believe, but if you do see him, be careful. He meant it when he said he would kill you.”

“I know.”

She nodded. After a moment, she touched his hand, her fingers slightly desperate and clingy. Then she released him, swept her gaze over him once, and asked, “Did you really have sex with Harry Potter?”

He smirked wearily. “Yes, mother.”

“Hmm.” Her expression matched the one a person might wear if they suddenly saw a five-legged unicorn. Bemused and mildly curious at once. It was very _so how did that impossible thing happen?_

Then she gave a graceful, one-shoulder shrug. “Take care, Draco.”

She left.

Neville leaned against him briefly. “Your family is fucked up.”

“She loves me,” Draco said. “Why doesn’t anyone believe that?”  
But then he looked back at the Weasleys, intact and loving and full of exhausted cheer, and sighed.

“My hair is all burned up,” Neville said.

“Yeah, but it happened because you decided to kill a snake,” Draco said. “It’s a war wound. Hannah will think it’s hot.”

*

He helped move still more of the dead.

He brought food and water to the wounded.

He sat with people who were grieving.

Sometimes he saw Potter, at a nearby table or across the Great Hall or at the other end of a corridor, doing much the same thing. But their paths didn’t really cross, and neither of them made any particular effort to change that.

Night fell, and Draco took the hottest shower he could and returned to the Room of Hidden Things. However, when he opened the door, he found only ash and thickly smoky air. He slammed it closed again. He wasn’t sure what the hell had happened, but he suspected that the Room wasn’t coming back from it.

Thank Merlin that Weasel 2 hadn’t been in there. Or Ginny, for that matter.

He didn’t know where else to go, and so he wandered around a bit, too exhausted to think clearly, until a hand came down on his shoulder and he looked up into Snape’s face.

“Hi,” he said, rather stupidly, extraordinarily pleased to see him, and Snape rolled his eyes.

“Idiot boy,” he muttered, but Draco thought there was affection in the words. Somewhere. Buried deep.

Then Snape was directing him up a flight of stairs and shoving him onto a large couch. He dimly thought a blanket might have landed on him, but he was out cold well before he could verify it.

He slept.

*

Later, rested but sore all over from a hundred nicks and bruises and bumps, Draco woke in a room he’d never been in before. He wandered a bit and realized he had slept in the personal sitting room of the Headmaster. Snape was gone. Draco cleaned up in the private bathroom, far nicer than the one he’d been using for the last six months, then headed downstairs. The place was relatively quiet, except for the section they’d set aside for the dead, where a score of Ministry officials, Healers and Aurors were talking and walking around.

Everyone else had gone; there was nothing pressing to do, no reason to stay when really everyone just wanted to be with their families. Just the official business was left—corralling the baddies and helping the goodies.

He was a little surprised he hadn’t been arrested.

And with nowhere else to go, Draco apparated to the grounds of the Manor.

Where he found Potter asleep in the afternoon sun, leaning against the wrought iron gate that blocked the drive.

Potter looked battered. He’d taken a shower at some point and changed his clothes, so he wasn’t dirty, but his hands looked like he’d tried to punch through walls, and there were countless tiny nicks and scrapes on his face and throat. He’d lost some weight somewhere, and there were deep bags of exhaustion under his eyes.

As if he felt the weight of Draco’s stare, Potter stirred and opened his eyes. When he saw Draco, his eyes tightened, became wary. But despite the weight loss and the exhaustion and the cuts and bruises, he was still the most beautiful thing Draco had ever seen. But that was a stupid road to go down, one that would only get him back to where he started, as Potter had said it himself, in more ways than Draco could really count, now. _I don’t want this._

Draco was good enough to fuck, and maybe that was what Potter wanted. Maybe that was what the kiss in the Room had meant. Not _I love you_ or _I care about you_ but _Let me fuck you._

It wouldn’t be the first time Potter had said that, either.

“Hi,” Potter murmured, looking into Draco’s face as if the answer to a puzzle lay there. “Can we talk?”

“No.” Draco held out his hand, palm up and open. “But I think you have something to give me.”

Potter nodded quickly, as if he’d forgotten. He stayed on his knees, turning to the left and reaching for something Draco couldn’t see.

“It’s a good thing you found it, I guess,” Draco said, a little annoyed that Potter had not only found his wand, but taken it and used it to save the world. It was just like the bastard to take what was—

But what landed in Draco’s palm wasn’t a wand. It was a mouse.

The relief and pleasure that ripped through him at the sight of Weasel 2 was probably stupid in light of the fact that the creature was, in fact, just a little rodent. But he’d missed the furry little devil so much, and his throat tightened up and he looked up at Potter with conflicted eyes.

Just in time to see Potter figure out what Draco had said. “Oh, right, your…well that’s…here.”

And his wand landed in his other hand. Draco shoved it in his trouser pocket and went back to cuddling Weasel 2 against his chest.

“Thanks,” he said. “Well, for the wand too, but especially for…”

“Yeah. He’s cute,” Potter said, gesturing toward the mouse.

Draco smiled slightly. “He helped keep me sane,” he said quietly. “I might not have made it to the battle without him. And whose wand would you have used then?”

“The mouse that saved the world?” Potter asked, sounding amused.

Draco pressed a kiss to the furry little head. “Why not?” He touched the iron barring his way and felt the shiver of the blood wards recognizing him. His father might have disowned him, but he had his mother’s consent, and that was all the magic needed to give him access to the property. The gates swung open.

“Thanks,” he said again, and turned to walk up the drive.

“Draco---I mean, Malf…” Potter stalled out. “I really do want to talk to you.”

Draco paused, turning back halfway. He stared down at the mouse in his hands and stroked one finger over the soft fur. Weasel 2 looked up, and it was probably impossible, but Draco thought he saw happiness in the shiny black eyes.

“There’s not really anything to talk about, is there?” Draco asked, glancing over.

Potter sighed. “Someone really smart told me once that I should give him a chance to explain because I wasn’t nearly as mad at him as I should have been.”

Draco frowned. “What? That’s stupid.”

Potter chuckled. “It was brilliant, actually. But that’s not the point.”

“Then get to it.”

The chuckle died. “I’d like to explain. It will only make you madder, more likely, but at least that way you’ll be mad about the right things.”

“Will it hurt?” Draco asked.

Potter considered him. “Maybe. Probably.”

Draco pressed a small kiss to Weasel 2’s head. “Then save it, Potter,” he said quietly. “I’ve had enough of that to last for a while. And your reasons aren’t going to fix what happened before or what will happen now.”

Potter stared at him, intent and hard-jawed. He nodded slowly. “Maybe not.” He frowned. “It’s just…I don’t really know who you are.”

“No, I suppose you don’t anymore,” Draco said.

“I don’t think I knew who you were before, either,” Potter said. “Everything I thought and felt was a muddle, but if I was only getting the good stuff, I wasn’t getting you.”

Draco swallowed. _I don’t care,_ he thought. All he wanted was to go inside and sit down with Weasel 2 in his lap and stare into a fire. But for an hour, tops, this time. Then he would owl Neville and Ginny, maybe even Lavender or Cho or Seamus. Fuck, maybe they could have a party here at the Manor and start a bonfire on the lawn to burn all the shit that Voldemort had ever touched.

Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea.

“You have good reasons not to be with me,” Draco said softly. “Is that what you’re trying to say? Because I think that’s been made perfectly clear.”

Potter jerked back, looking stung. “Malfoy…that’s not…no. I don’t know. I’m saying it was fake.” He reached out with one hand then stopped abruptly, staring at his fingers as if they’d moved on their own. “It’s not worth having again if it wasn’t real, is it?”

Draco’s temper snapped. “What do you want, Potter?”

“Just to talk—”

“No. I mean, what do you want out of this little talk? Do you want to feel less guilty, assuming you even do? Do you want to tell me I was wrong to feel the way I did? Maybe you mean that I shouldn’t have tried to fuck you that last day. I already know that, believe me. Or are you here looking for a fuck? Say what you want.”

Potter had paled, and his jaw muscles worked as he stood there, staring. He jammed his hands in his pockets. Eventually, he said, “I haven’t had a lot of time. Everything is…it was just yesterday that it ended. I mean, that the pot—”

“Say what you want or get the fuck off my land,” Draco said, his voice raw and unforgiving.

Potter turned his head, looking off into the distance, his throat working. “I want to apologize. I’m sorry I hurt you, Draco. You might not believe me, but I truly am.”

“Thank you,” Draco said emptily. “Is that it?”

*

_Is that it?_

Harry supposed that was the big question. Was the chance to apologize all he wanted from the boy in front of him?

The truth was, Harry’s head was a mess. He didn’t know how he felt; too much had happened in too little time, and he still felt like he was running to catch up.

He wondered how long it had been since he hadn’t felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. And the last few weeks particularly had been one long push towards what he had believed was certain death. One night, a horrifically bad night just before Christmas, he’d turned his wand over in his hands repeatedly and tried desperately to convince himself that it was utterly inhuman of him to kill himself when he was so needed just because he couldn’t bear the waiting anymore. And on top of that, he’d been aware of a constant, low-level pull, telling him that things would get better if he could just get to Hogwarts.

And then he had died. And seen Dumbledore. And come back.

No, he had no idea what he wanted, what he felt, what he thought.

All he had known upon waking this morning was that he had to see Draco. He truly had no idea why; the effects of the potion had vanished with the destruction of the horcrux within him, and he was fully Harry again, so he was nothing less than shocked that Draco still hovered in the corners of his mind, persistent and magnetic.

When he looked too closely at his thoughts of him, he fell all in a jumble. He thought perhaps he was angry at the other boy, although he didn’t know what for, and he was definitely confused (hell, that was the understatement of the year). Beneath that was a heaping dose of guilt and shame for the way he had left things: he had spent months making himself sick over the way he’d ended things, as the image of Draco’s agonized expression had haunted him, just as he’d thought it would. His confession to Hermione and Ron about the cruelty-colored breakup sex had not helped. They had tried to be supportive, but he could tell that they both thought he’d done a shitty thing, potion or not, and he could not disagree with them.

And somewhere in there beneath the anger and confusion and guilt was something else, the same something that had driven him to come here, to Malfoy Manor, of all places, in the need to see the other boy. He could not identify the feeling, but it was related to happiness, he thought, because it was pretty damn close to what he’d felt when he’d seen Draco the night before, standing in the Room of Requirement, bold and beautiful and almost unrecognizable in black leather pants, a crisp black button-down left untucked, and that ridiculously seductive eyeliner that made his eyes look enormous and even more mysterious than usual.

Harry had felt complete. He’d felt as if a chaotic river within him had run slow and sweet for the first time in months.

What was messing with his head was that the feeling should’ve gone away with the potion.

And yet he was sitting here in the dirt, waiting to speak to someone who, in all likelihood and with complete justification, surely hated him.

All shouted claims of great sex to the contrary.

Harry did not know how to answer Draco’s question. It should have been easy to say _yes, that’s everything_ but it wasn’t.

He saw again the moment when Draco had worn that warm, sly smile as he held Ginny close and patted her teasingly on the bottom. He recalled the way Draco’s eyes had shone hard and unyielding as he all but told Harry where to shove it after Harry had kissed him. The way Draco had emerged from the opposite end of the corridor in time to save Fred’s life, looking unafraid and competent and sort of…badass, actually.

But most of all, it was the way Draco had hissed slurs at Voldemort like the little cat Harry had loved so wildly while the potion burned through his veins. Lying in Hagrid’s arms, waiting for his moment, he’d listened to Draco laugh and decry his own innocence and humiliate Voldemort by telling him and the whole world that he’d let Harry Potter fuck him and liked every second of it.

And Harry had felt the one emotion for Draco he’d never known before: pride.

For someone who had once claimed that he would turn on Harry in a heartbeat to save his own skin…well, Draco had been magnificent.

All of these things were what held him in place without an answer to the other boy’s question.

Draco had taken his inability to answer as an answer in its own right. “Well then,” he said, looking with tired eyes at the mouse—yes, the pet mouse Ginny had given to Harry to return, still more evidence that this boy was not the boy he’d been back at Grimmauld, when he’d have seen the presence of such a creature as proof that the place was dirty or infested—and shaking his blond head. Draco sighed. “Have a nice life, Potter.”

He turned and began walking up the drive.

And as he watched Draco walk away from him, everything in Harry cried one thing, one potion-free word, a single urge that spilled from his lips without thought.

“Wait.”

 


	2. Mutually Assured Destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein our heroes finally get their crap together! So romantic, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. This and the epilogue are the last bits, folks. I just want to say that I've had a lot of fun writing this series, in large part because people have been so enthusiastic about supporting it, and I'd like to thank all of my readers for that. I hope everyone likes how it turned out (because it's a little too late for me to fix it if it's horrid), and our boys have been through so much that they deserve a little HEA, don't ya think?
> 
> 2\. Allons-y is French for Let's Go, and it's also a reference to Doctor Who. Just so you know what it means when you get there.
> 
> 3\. I am making no money from any of this and I own none of these characters. Although both of those would be cool.

 

"Wait." 

Even as he jerked to a stop at Potter’s quiet plea, Draco cursed himself for being the worst kind of fool.

“What?” he forced himself to say. “What now?”

“There are things you deserve to know. And even though I know I don’t deserve it, there are things I need to say. Please, Draco. Give me a chance to explain. I can’t…I can’t just let you walk away. Not with things as they are.”

Draco put a hand to his head, rubbing at his temple with the hand not cradling Weasel 2. “Ten minutes. And I reserve the right to kick your ass at any time.”

“Agreed,” Potter said immediately.

Draco sighed. “We’re going inside, though. I need to eat, and I’m not going to stand out here like a peasant while you monologue.”

Potter laughed softly.

With the other boy steady at his back, Draco led the way down the drive to the Manor. Gravel crunched under his heavy, lace-up boots (courtesy of Lavender, who had told him _you were born to wear leather, Draco, because it makes you look BADASS._ The capital letters had been very plain in her speech). The sound of the rocks shifting emphasized the awkward silence rather than filling it.

As they reached the stairs to the front door, Draco hesitated.

“You all right?” Potter asked.

A breeze swept across the lawn. Draco felt a chill and murmured, mostly to himself, “I faced down a werewolf last night, but going into my own house scares me.”

“It makes sense,” Potter said quietly. “This is your childhood and your family in one, and it was…well, desecrated, I guess. This one’s personal.”

Because Potter had gotten it right, Draco slid him a resentful glance. Then, feeling stupid for having made the comment anyway, he squared his shoulders and strode determinedly up, not surprised when a house elf opened the door before he reached it.

“Master Draco,” squeaked the little thing, and he glanced down, not recognizing it. “I knows you from your portrait! Welcome home!”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Miffy, sir.”

The entry hall echoed with the sound of their footsteps and Draco inhaled, catching the scents of stone and, more faintly, lilac, a flower his mother preferred this time of year. The smell made him smile a tiny bit. That, at least, hadn’t changed.

“You’re new,” he said to the elf absently.

“Miffy is replacing Galler, sir.”

Draco noticed the elf’s flinching eyes. “Was he killed?”

“Yes, sir. He…he was a bad elf. Dropping things. But Miffy is a good elf, sir, even if she is new and doesn’t know how to do all yet.”

“I’m certain. But you’ve no need to worry about that anymore,” he said, and proceeded inside. “I won’t hurt you if you mess up.”

“Thank you sir,” Miffy squeaked, her big round eyes looking pleasantly surprised. “A letter arrived for sir just this morning. Shall I bring it along with refreshments?”

“That will be fine.”

“Where would sir like them?”

He considered just where he wanted to have this conversation with Potter; it was likely to be horrid enough as it was and he had no interest in compounding that by sitting in a room that had known equally horrific events. That ruled out the dungeons for more reasons than he could count; the dining room, as Professor Burbage had been eaten by the snake there; Draco himself had been forced to torture Muggles and Death Eaters alike in the drawing room while several others drank brandy and discussed politics; he had no desire to step foot in his father’s study; and the morning room had been reserved for his mother’s personal use—he didn’t want to cloud it with the argument that was likely to spring up.

There was no way in hell he was doing this in his old bedroom, either. He didn’t want Potter taking that the wrong way—and he needed his mind clear.

“The Chapel,” he decided.

He led Potter through, passing portraits and stands bearing antique vases, stands of flowers, and ancient tapestries. The corridors had a cold, disused feel to them despite having been occupied, no doubt, just yesterday. Once again, he was intensely aware of Potter walking slightly behind him, his broad shoulders and taller figure seeming even larger than they already were. He was the one thing that stood out as vital and warm in the quiet chill of the house.

After turning left, Draco opened a set of double doors. An immense room, bathed in the sunlight which flooded through the floor-to-ceiling windows set in one wall, housed an elaborate dais that ran the length of the opposite wall, emphasizing the elaborate gatherings of flowers and bushes placed there.

“This is a Chapel?” Harry asked, staring all around at the lush vegetation.

“It was, in far older times,” Draco explained. As he spoke he conjured a box, some shavings, and a wheel for Weasel 2 and gently put the mouse inside. “It was converted around the same time that the International Statute for Secrecy was enacted. Before then, to stay safe during witch hunts, the Chapel helped act as proof of the Malfoys’ faith in the Church. Then, when the Wizarding World pulled away from the Muggle world, we didn’t need to convince anyone of anything, and it was turned into more of a conservatory.”

“Got rid of everything but the name, huh?” Potter’s lips quirked. “Why does it not surprise me that the Malfoys are not devout?”

Draco gave him a baleful look. “Neither religion nor its absence predicts morality or decency—”

Potter quickly held his hands up, apology in his face. “I was teasing. Sorry. Not funny.”

Draco took a deep breath. “Fine.”

In the center of the space was a large, feminine, wrought-iron table surrounded by six matching, thickly-cushioned chairs. Draco seated himself, and moments later was greeted with a loud crack as the elf returned. Refreshments were served—small sandwiches, biscuits and tea—and as Potter settled himself and gingerly began eating with his fingers, Draco put a little bit of bread in with Weasel 2 before opening the letter.

It was from the Ministry, a notice generated automatically whenever certain actions triggered points of inheritance law. The thick sheaf of parchment explained that his father’s flight from likely Ministry prosecution meant that he had forfeited his rights to all holdings and assets. Draco was officially the reigning Malfoy, regardless of the fact that his father had begun the process of disowning him. With a shaking hand he set the letter aside, flipping through the documents that were included—thorough descriptions of what he now owned, their assorted values and statuses.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about this and took a cup of tea to distract himself, studying Potter over the rim. He looked too masculine, too rough, for the dainty chair he sat in. His strength overwhelmed the furniture. Hell, it overwhelmed Draco, who couldn’t keep his eyes from lingering on the firm jawline and broad shoulders and square, capable hands. Which was stupid, because noticing things like that would not do anything but make him unhappy.

“This suits you.” Potter was studying him as if even the way Draco maintained his posture bespoke breeding. “All of this, I mean. The house. The status. You fit.”

“Even in leather?” Draco asked, smirking a bit before sobering and placing a hand flat on the expensive table. “No, it’s familiar, but it’s not me. Not anymore.” He felt surprisingly melancholy about it, but found he valued his new self too dearly to abandon it for the sake of resuming the identity of Lord of the Manor.

“I used to love it here,” Draco murmured, running his eyes over grounds beyond the glass.

“You can learn to love it again,” Potter said fervently, then frowned, as if questioning himself. He turned his face away, hiding his expression.

“Some things exist only once,” Draco replied, suddenly angry at himself. Why did he keep falling back into the same old habit of running his mouth with this idiot? He sat up straight, trying to keep it formal. “As they should. Now would be a good time for you to say what you came to say.”

“This whole room is beautiful,” Potter said. “Is that a Flutterby Bush I’m seeing?”

“Is that stalling I’m seeing?”

Potter smiled sheepishly. “Maybe a bit.” He shoveled another iced biscuit in his mouth, as if in hopes of being granted just another moment to think. Finally, clearing his throat, he said, “I’m not sure where to start, exactly. I wish I could do to you what Snape did to me that day. I won’t, obviously, but there’s something nice in the idea that I could tie you to a chair and take your wand so you’ll be forced to listen to the whole thing before you attack me.”

Draco said nothing.

“Make this easy, why don’t you?” Potter muttered. He ran an anxious hand through his hair. “Well, shit. Here goes. I lied.”

Draco lifted his eyebrows when Potter didn’t continue. “Is there more to that admission? Or am I supposed to guess?”

“That last day. When I told you that the potion had gone and my feelings for you had gone as well and that you had to leave? I lied. Well, about the first two things, anyway.”

The words didn’t make sense at first, and Draco could only sit there waiting, as if letting Potter go on speaking would give them proper meaning.

“I don’t understand.”

“The potion was still in effect.”

“How?” Draco asked through numb lips.

“The negative effects were caused by the interaction between the potion and a horcrux.”

“The horcrux was destroyed.”

“One of them was,” Potter said. He pointed a finger at his scar. “But the other one was a little harder to get rid of.”

Draco shook his head. “You…”

“Yeah, Snape explained it. I was like the snake—a living house for a part of his soul. And until that horcrux was gone, we’d have ended up right back where we were that morning. With Voldemort trying to use me to rape you.”

“So you’re still under the…no, you can’t be, or he would still be alive. Oh, fuck, is he still alive?”

“No!” Potter leaned across the table, reaching for his hand, but Draco jerked away. He didn’t dare let Potter touch him; his will would fade like smoke on the wind. After hesitating awkwardly, Potter sank back down. “No, he’s dead. You don’t have to worry. And the horcrux is gone. It happened when I died.”

“You _died_?” Draco stared at him incredulously. “I thought that was a trick…”

“Well, the whole pretending-to-be-dead was. But that was after I...hell, it sounds so melodramatic, but all the same…that was after I came back from the dead. Your mother helped with that whole pretending thing, by the way.” He paused, then said politely, “She seems nice.”

"She loves me," Draco said automatically. But he was focused more on his own thoughts; for a second, his mind was stuck back in the courtyard, staring at Potter’s dead body in Hagrid’s arms. Potter had truly died…if even a small thing had gone differently, it might have stayed real. A shadow of the grief that had weakened his knees that day flared through him until he firmly pushed it away. It didn’t change anything. Not really. Although…

“Did you know? That you had to die?”

“Yes.”

Draco swallowed, impressed by Potter’s fortitude and steady gaze despite himself. But then, that had been part of the appeal over the last nine months. Potter’s intrinsic nobility and bravery. It was visible in his very skin, in the soft, kind mouth, in the warm, tired eyes, just now looking at Draco as if Potter saw everything in him and still wanted to be here. In a place Draco had forgotten existed, a curl of yearning hummed. “How do you manage to be so…?”

“What?”

“I don’t even know the word. Forget it.” They’d gotten off track. He pushed that little bit of wanting down deep and made himself remember where they’d been in the conversation. “The point being that there was a horcrux in your head that day, and the potion was still working.”

“Yes.”

Draco took a sip of tea with a shaking hand before speaking quite calmly. “So you’re saying that when you made me roll over so you wouldn’t have to look at me while you fucked me and then told me to get out of your house before your come was cleaned from my arse, that was you still wildly in love with me?”

“Jesus,” Potter said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Don’t put it like that.”

“I’ll put it how I like,” Draco said coldly. “If you want to control both sides of the conversation, I’ll find you a mirror.”

“I didn’t mean…I’m sorry, all right? Yes, that day I was still feeling the potion when I did all of that.”

“So what was the point of it?”

“There wasn’t just one reason. Partly I was trying to protect you—”

Draco stared at him in amazement. He made an uncontrolled gesture of shock and exasperation, flinging his hands wide, and Potter jolted to a halt so Draco could interrupt. “Wait. I’m sorry. I think I just heard you say the equivalent of _you lied to me and kicked me out in the cruelest possible way for my own good._ Was that it? Can you repeat that? Because if I’m going to fucking murder you, it should be for the right goddamn reason.”

“That’s…not…” Potter trailed off and looked away. “It sounds bad when you put it like that.”

“Oh, does it?”

Face turning red, Potter said, “I would have been possessed again. I’d have tried to rape you again. I had to get you out of there.”

“Well, aren’t you the hero?”

“Don’t be a bitch; that day carved me up too.”

Draco laughed so hard tears nearly came from his eyes. “Oh, that was hard for you too? I’m so sorry, Potter. I hadn’t realized. I feel like I should send you a note of apology.”

“Are you through?” Potter asked through gritted teeth.

Draco went on as if he hadn’t heard him. “I do so hate to be unfair.”

“That was the one of the hardest days of my life, you git, and that’s saying something, because I’ve had some truly nightmarish ones. That conversation took place about twenty minutes after I found out I was going to have to die. At seventeen. At the hands of the monster that killed my parents. And I told you, it wasn’t just about protecting you. How do you think I’d have managed to look for the other horcruxes if I was possessed by Voldemort? Do you think it was easy knowing he could get back into my head? And then losing you on top of all of that? Having to do what I did? Don’t you dare act like that day didn’t cost me anything.”

Draco felt a rush of sympathy despite himself and cursed softly. “All right! I get it. The death sentence thing would be…I can’t imagine it. All right? But what I don’t get is why you didn’t just fucking _tell me_ that.”

Potter licked his lips. “Would you have gone? Even if you were in danger? Even if it put the quest at risk?”

“Did you have the first clue who I was back then? Yes, Potter! I would have fucking left you.”

“You would not! If you’d found out I was going to die in the process of killing him, you’d have clung to me with everything you had and tried your best to find any way to get that horcrux out.”

“No! I’m a coward! I would have run!” Draco’s voice rose in volume. Hardly civilized, but he didn’t particularly care at the moment.

“Not from me,” Potter said stubbornly. “Anyone else, yeah. But not from me. You needed me like you’ve never needed anyone.”

“You arrogant bastard.”

“Am I wrong?” He reached across this table again, this time so quickly that Draco couldn’t evade his grip, and his fingers ended up tightly clenched in Potter’s. The touch went through him like lightning; the hands around his were warm and unyielding and larger than his. He experienced a feeling he had often known when Potter touched him: a sense of himself as physically delicate. He had so often felt dazed by the other boy’s strength and physicality.

He tried desperately to wrench away; Potter did not release him.

“Be honest, Draco. Please. Think about it. Remember what we were together. And then tell me you would have left me to die without you. That you wouldn’t have tried to save me.”

“Fuck you!” Draco cried, and yanked so hard against the grip that he’d have pulled Potter across the table if the other boy hadn’t let go. He had to move, to pace, because the hell of it was that the doubt had been planted; he wasn’t sure anymore. So he fell back on something he was certain about. “You had no right!”

“That’s true. I know it. But I couldn’t afford to be wrong. Too much weighed on it. I couldn’t waste away into possession and hurt you again. The search for the horcruxes could not be rerouted into a search for a cure. And you would have searched.”

When Draco went to protest, Potter stood, knocking the knuckles of one hand against the table and making his voice firm. “You know it’s true! There are things I don’t know about you, but I know how you love. You give all of yourself to it. And I couldn't bear it. I couldn't let you distract me with hope, and I couldn't put you at risk. I just...couldn't. I'm so sorry for how it made you feel, but...I don't know that I could have chosen any other way and lived with it.”

Draco walked back and forth over the elegant marble tiles, his arms swinging furiously. And then he abruptly stopped. “What am I supposed to do with this? Is this why you came here? To make me feel like what you did was justified? Because even if you had to dump me, there’s no justification for the way you did it. I’m not talking about the breakup sex—that was as much me as you. I mean the way you said you couldn’t fuck me if you had to look at me. The way you talked to me—telling me to get out, no explanation, no conversation, just pack your shit and go. How do you justify that? Or, best of all, the part where you asked how I could be so pathetic as to beg? You were my first, Potter, and I was in love with you. Of course I fucking begged. Or did you forget that part?”

Potter swallowed once. “I didn’t forget.”

“Why?” Draco asked, and damn him, but it came out small and hurt. And of course Potter caught it; his green eyes filled with regret and pity before he dropped them to the table.

“The goal was to be fast. Tell you and go, before the potion kept me from doing it at all. I was trying not to give you a chance to argue.”

Draco let out a bitter chuckle. “And when I did get a chance, look what I did with it. Built to fuck, isn’t that what you said I was?”

“Don’t say that about yourself,” Potter snapped, gaze lifting and full of fire. Full of defense for Draco. He came around the edge of the table to face him directly. “Don’t. That’s not what you are.”

“That’s quite the shift in perspective from you, Potter. Did you come here to fix my damaged self-esteem? Just to apologize? Or was there another reason you felt it was necessary to get all of this out on the table?”

“I wanted you to know why I kissed you yesterday. I wasn’t trying to mess with your head.”

“Well, now I can sleep at night once more.” Draco smiled mirthlessly. “It was the potion at work again. Thanks for letting me know. I’d assumed you were taking another stab at making me want to tear my hair out.”

“Draco,” Potter said quietly. “I thought that the day you left Grimmauld would be the last time I saw you. I made you roll over because I didn’t want you to see me cry. And…I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make you leave if I kept seeing how much it hurt you. And I shouldn’t have had sex with you at all, I know that. I’m sorry. I thought that one last time with you would be enough to get me through the rest of it, but then yesterday, there you were there in the Room of Requirement, and I realized it wasn’t enough, it would never be enough. I knew Voldemort was coming. I knew I was going to die last night. And I needed you. Just to feel you in my arms one last time. I thought if I did that, it would make going to him…shit, I don’t know. Bearable, maybe.”

“I can’t do this,” Draco said. He had somehow ended up standing right in front of the other boy, but that was all right because this way he could make every word go just where he wanted it. “You’re making it all seem rational. You’re making me feel stupid, like I’m selfish to be upset, and that’s not fair. Why are you doing this? Why are you bringing it all back?”

“You said you deserved to know back then. You still deserve to know. How can you be mad at me for telling you now and still be mad at me for not telling you back then?”

“Because I got over you!” Draco cried. “I am fine now, and I don’t need you coming in here and messing everything up. I am _fine.”_

“Are you?” Potter asked quietly. He took a step closer. Then another. “I’m not sure I am.” He reached out with one hand, trailing fingertips along the line of Draco’s jaw. “I’m not sure at all.”

The touch sped Draco’s pulse; he felt rough calluses on his skin even while the touch was gentle. Potter took a last step forward; their chests nearly brushed.

“I’m fine,” Draco whispered. “I got over you.”

“I don’t believe you.” That warm hand tipped his face up, and Draco was trembling violently, his whole body arching forward, eager to rest against Potter, and he couldn’t breathe. Icing-scented breath washed over his face as soft lips dropped to land almost imperceptibly on the corner of his mouth. The lips moved, brushing his cheek, his forehead, then forcing his eyelids closed under gentle kisses.

Draco shuddered and Potter’s other hand came up to rest lightly on his hip. So lightly that Draco couldn’t quite believe that it was necessary to make him move it. It slid down and around, massaging tenderly against the small of his back. And somehow, without ever seeming to increase its pressure, that hand slowly helped Draco lean into Potter.

The lips descended again, against Draco’s other cheek this time, soothing the hurt inside him even as it stoked his need higher.

“You are so beautiful,” Potter whispered.

The lips touched the opposite corner of his mouth, lingering, caressing, and it was Draco who broke, who moaned, who slid them into a slow, hot, open kiss. Potter groaned, collecting Draco still closer, releasing his face to wrap that arm around him as well. The kiss grew, deeper and wetter, until Potter’s tongue was moving with long, seductive strokes, dipping and teasing and pressing. Learning. Testing.

Draco’s hands had somehow gotten into Potter’s hair and clung. His breath strangled in his lungs, his mind whirled, and he felt warm, wanted, for the first time in months.

Still the kiss went on, slippery and patient, the only hint that Potter was restraining himself being found in the way his hands shook at the effort of remaining gentle. Sweet and slick and making Draco’s head foggy and heavy, and Potter was _everywhere,_ already in his mind and heart, and now making this gentle, tender assault on his body, and Draco hated himself for needing this boy so badly that he would ruin everything he had become just to hold him.

Potter released his mouth in favor of licking and nibbling across Draco’s jaw and down to his throat. The touch of tongue and scrape of teeth sent shivers burning through his skin. His hands clenched tighter in Potter’s hair compulsively.

“Why are you doing this?” Draco whispered, even as his head fell back.

“I still want you,” Potter groaned. “Christ help me.”

“You wish you didn’t.”

That made Potter lift his head. He looked uncompromising in his arousal, pupils blown wide, face flushed, eyes intent and aggressive on Draco’s face. Then they abruptly softened.

“Don’t cry,” Potter said softly, touching a thumb to one cheek and collecting a tear. “Please?”

And like that, reality reasserted itself. Draco wrenched violently away, breathing like he’d been underwater for too long. His body thrummed with the desire to turn around, to go back to Potter’s arms where he could be warm again, but he felt half-wild with confusion and anger. And the burn in his chest, the one he’d thought long extinguished, reappeared.

Draco put his head in his hands. “Get out.”

“Please, Draco. Wait.”

“Get out.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to want you. I didn’t _expect_ to want you. I thought…cripes, I’m explaining it badly, I know.”

“Get out!” Draco screamed, and Potter jumped, looking stricken.

“All right,” he murmured. “All right, I’ll go.” He stood, brushing his fingers reluctantly over the glass surface of the table, his expression twisted with rigid unhappiness. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t have any right to do that. It was stupidly impulsive and unfair and…Christ, taken on top of everything else you have every reason to hate me.”

“I appreciate the permission,” Draco whispered, looking up with hollow eyes. “Now get out of my house.”

Potter nodded slowly. “Yeah, okay. Okay. I’m…” He sighed heavily, sounding miserable. “Take care, Draco.”

Draco went to the window, listening to the sound of Potter’s retreating footsteps and the distant crack of Miffy apparating to show him out.

He’d screamed at the other boy. Malfoys weren’t supposed to scream. A humorless chuckle escaped him. Now that he was a Malfoy again, he was probably supposed to go back to following those rules, but he couldn’t really work up the energy to care about it. Besides, the screaming had felt good. Like back in the Room in Hogwarts when he’d worked his temper out by exploding piles of wood until they were ash.

He stared out into the lush vegetation beyond the glass, and wondered if he’d been carrying all of this rage and grief all along, even though he’d thought it had gone. Or perhaps it was all new. Perhaps Potter would always provoke these feelings in him. He had a talent for planting seeds in Draco’s mind, seeds that grew into flowers that mingled beauty with poison.

He touched a finger to his lips; they were still tingling.

He’d thought, with the potion gone, that this would have changed. Lessened. But no.

The hardest part was that Draco could very nearly accept Potter’s reasons. He hadn’t said anything that was untrue; Draco had been wildly in love by that point. He would’ve stayed to find a cure. He would’ve tried to ignore the threat of the possession returning. And he would’ve told Potter to say damn-all to the Wizarding World and let Draco save him.

But Potter was right about the rest of it too; it didn’t matter how good the reasons were. It had still hurt. Draco still wanted to tip over the line between fury and hate. He didn’t care what it had meant to the world or anyone else. He should’ve been given the chance to get what he wanted. And if it had to end, it should’ve ended differently.

Suddenly he felt like the old Draco; frightened, unkind, angry. Heedless of the effects of his actions on the people around him. Less than an hour around Potter and he reverted.

Back to being the whore he’d always been. Back to letting Potter do whatever he wanted, even now, when it would be worse, when it would cut him up inside with the knowledge that Potter didn’t love him, didn’t even really care that much.

Good enough to fuck. Not good enough to love or even like.

A horrid thought occurred to him. The potion had still been in effect the entire time he’d been living at Hogwarts. The time in which Neville and Ginny and all the others had come to like him and respect him.

It hadn’t been real.

He sat down, right there by the glass, because his legs simply wouldn’t hold him.

Even after everything he’d tried to do, to become, he would never be enough on his own, to have anyone actually want him.

*

Harry walked out of Malfoy Manor feeling like the worst kind of bastard. He had gone to the Manor to help Draco get some closure, to hear the apology he so rightly deserved. And, he had to admit, to absolve himself.

Funny that he could manage to run a campaign to take down the darkest wizard the world had ever known, but being a decent ex was beyond his moral capabilities.

The explanation had been more difficult than he’d expected. He’d tried hard not to cut himself excuses or slack, and for the most part he thought he’d succeeded. But seeing the unhappiness in Draco’s face, hearing the twist of hurt in his voice…that had been worse, far worse than admitting he’d been cruel in the first place.

And the kiss.

Harry stopped at the apparition point just beyond the gates and groaned, putting his head in his hands. He saw again the flash of those gray eyes—lovely and uncertain. The angular face set in a complicated expression: cool and taunting on the surface, vulnerable and defenseless underneath. Pretty much the definition of Draco. He heard again the little hitches in the other boy’s breath, felt the soft skin beneath his fingertips, tasted those trembling lips and the hot, wet mouth beyond, thrilled to the gradual way Draco’s weight had come to lean against him.

Harry was still hard. Hell, that was an understatement. He burned for it. Burned for Draco.

It was supposed to be gone, this feeling. He was supposed to let Draco go, let him move on and be happy.

But every cell in his body wanted to turn around and go back in. And not for sex. The sight of tears on those cheeks had carved him up. He wanted to pull Draco onto his lap, soothe him with kisses, pet his hair, whisper funny stories to cheer him up, maybe even let the smaller boy fall asleep cuddled in his arms.

Harry groaned again. This was supposed to be gone, dammit.

But it seemed that he was somehow right where he’d always been.

Utterly obsessed with Draco Malfoy.

*

“What did you expect, mate?” Ron sat at the table at Grimmauld Place, tucking into an elaborate afternoon snack of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and steamed squash. Hermione had already finished her far less enthusiastic snack—an apple and some cheese—and now sat beside him, nodding sympathetically as he spoke with his mouth full. “I mean, we get why you didn’t tell us about being a horcrux, even if we’ll have to murder you ourselves if you ever lie like that again.”

“Duly noted,” Harry said.

“But Draco got the shortest end of that stick. Of course he’s going to kick you out.”

“It really was a crap way to break up with someone,” Hermione said, not unkindly. “And he’s clearly still angry…”

“That’s not even the worst of it,” Harry groaned. “Oh, God, I did something horrible.”

Ron and Hermione both looked alarmed, and Harry suddenly remembered that, on a sliding scale that included possession and attempted rape, horrible could be pretty fucking horrible.

“I kissed him,” he said quickly, hoping to assuage their worry, and it worked, because now they were both angry instead.

“Harry!” Hermione all but shrieked. “What is wrong with you?”

“I don’t know!” he shouted back. “That’s my point! It’s not the potion and it’s not the horcrux, it’s just me in my head, but I’m still _acting_ like I was. Rationally, I don’t know what I want or why or if there’s something else going on or it’s a good idea, but then he was standing there and he’s still so damn beautiful, and he was wearing leather pants, and he said he was over me and it bothered me until I realized he was lying, but he was so upset, and I was trying to soothe him and I couldn’t think. Then we were kissing and he was _crying,_ and it was _killing_ me and I think I’m going mad.”

Hermione’s expression had lost some of its hardness, but Ron’s had not.

“If you don’t want him, that means you’re playing with his head, mate,” he said, “and that’s not okay. You’re being downright cruel now.”

“It’s not that I don’t want him,” Harry said desperately. “It’s that I’m not supposed to want him. God, I should apologize—”

“Don’t you dare go near him again,” Ron said harshly. “He kicked you out. If he wants something from you, he’s got legs that work. But if you try to apologize you’re going to make it worse. Just stay away from him and let him live his life without you.”

“The idea of it hurts.” Harry shook his head when Ron flushed with anger. “I’m not arguing. I know you’re right, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m just explaining…not having him feels wrong.”

“That’s understandable,” Hermione said. “The two of you were together—”

“No, Hermione, we weren’t. I was drugged, remember? I wasn’t seeing Draco as he really was, and I wasn’t with him of my own free will, however it might have looked. So while I completely understand why Draco still has feelings, it doesn’t make sense that I would.”

“That’s a good point,” she said uncertainly. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way. I guess that would be like waking up and realizing you’d been shagging Cormac McLaggen without actually wanting to.” She shuddered. “Ugh.”

Harry gave a small shudder as well—McLaggen was not someone he wanted to think about in the context of shagging. Partly to get them off the subject, he said, “And if the potion is still affecting me, I’m not worth having anyway. It’s like Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle. No one with any self-respect wants someone who only stays because they’re under the influence.”

“True,” Ron said, gesturing with his fork and getting flecks of mashed potatoes on the table. “Which is yet another reason why Romilda Vane is a cow.”

Harry was too tense to laugh even though the joke was a sign that Ron wasn’t so angry at him anymore. “Snape said the effects of the potion would be gone. That I would go back to seeing Draco exactly how he is. But standing in that room with him—it was like being back at Grimmauld, looking at him through the shower door. I couldn’t breathe.”

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione said softly.

“I can’t go back to Draco and tell him that it’s me wanting him of my own free will when I don’t know that it is. That’s not fair. He deserves someone he can trust.”

Ron sighed. “I hate to be the one to say this, mate, I truly do. But you’re going to have to go see Snape.”

*

Draco sat on the floor of the Chapel long enough that the afternoon light began to wane into evening. Crickets started to sing and the air cooled through the glass. His butt got numb from remaining still for so long, but he didn’t move. He just stared. When he heard voices, at first he thought he’d fallen asleep; but then he recognized that the happy words belonged to two people that he was deeply torn about seeing.

“Draco!” Ginny cried happily, dancing across the room toward him. “How’s one of the many heroes of the—what the hell happened? Why is your face like that?”

“You’re staring,” Neville said with alarm. “Why are you staring? Don’t do the staring, okay? We’ll fix it. Whatever it is.”

Draco swallowed. “I’m fine.”

“You’re clearly not,” Neville said. He sank into a chair. “Start talking.”

Ginny promptly sat the floor beside him and rested her head on his shoulder. Just for a second, though. “Your shoulders are a bit bony,” she said conversationally. “I don’t understand what Weasel 2 sees in them.”

He snorted a reluctant laugh. For a moment he was tempted to lie, to just never let them realize that they didn’t actually care. As Neville had once told him, if you did something enough times, it became habit, and then it just became a part of you. Maybe they would keep being his friends now that they were in the habit of it.

But then he realized that if he did that, he would always know that it wasn’t real. And that wasn’t enough.

“Do you guys have a little while? It’s kind of a long story.”

“How long?” Ginny asked.

“Long,” Draco replied emphatically.

“Hmm. We’re going to need food.”

*

Two and a half hours later, they sat with the remnants of a magnificent three-course meal scattered around them (Miffy, when gently told she should have let Draco know he had guests before just sending them in, had outdone herself to make up for the mistake once she found that he wouldn’t allow her to iron her ears).

It had taken even longer than he’d thought to explain it all. Things hadn’t been helped by Ginny, who had a very interactive approach to listening; she asked questions and sympathized frequently and argued every little point to death. She was _invested._

It made his stomach hurt, because he really, really liked it.

When he got to the part about Potter’s visit that afternoon, he began to slow down. His throat began to ache from trying to remain even.

“You two are drama,” Neville said, considering the whole situation with a sort of objective pity. “And I can see what you’re both saying, and neither of you are wrong, really, but hell. I can’t believe he kissed you. Again.”

“And when I get back to the Burrow I’m going to punch him in the face for trying that,” Ginny said, scowling and clenching her fists.

“ _I_ kissed _him_ ,” Draco said tiredly. “It takes two.”

“Yeah. Two punches. Don’t give me that look. I am your friend and I am honor-bound to hit Harry Potter square in his nose.”

Friend? Draco blinked. “Y-you missed the part about the potion still working until yesterday.”

“No, we didn’t,” Ginny said. “We ignored it.”

“Right.” Draco stood. “So you can go now.”

Neville sent Ginny a silent look that Draco interpreted as _I told you so._ Ginny sent back a resigned look that Draco interpreted as _All right, I owe you a galleon._

“What?” he asked impatiently.

Neville cleared his throat. “We were sort of waiting for this. Well, not for this exactly, not the potion part where you think—rather stupidly, I might add—that the only reason we would like you is because of a magical substance. But we were expecting you to have a bit of a stumble once you were free again, which would make complete sense because you’ve basically been living in a cage like your mouse for months after a profoundly difficult year, so anyone would stumble, but when you stumble, Draco, you get all stiff and proud and _why don’t you just go, then?_ about it. _”_

Ginny laughed. “Did it ever occur to you that you were just—by coincidence maybe?—growing up to become the person that the potion always made us think you were? I mean, we’ve been here for a while now, and we were with you for a long time yesterday after the horcrux thing was broken, and you really don’t seem any different to me.”

“Or me,” Neville said. “So maybe this potion keeps stuff from getting in the way of affection, but maybe there was nothing much in the way for us in the first place. Did you ever think of that?”

“No,” Draco said, rather idiotically.

“You were really scared,” Ginny murmured. “Weren’t you?”

Draco rolled his eyes, so beyond relieved that he thought he might slump boneless to the table and sleep for a week. He reached across and took her hand, squeezing hard, even as he said lightly, “Don’t start fishing, Weasley. I’m not going to tell you I would’ve died without your presence in my life.”

“You don’t have to say it, you just have to know it’s true,” she said, and Neville smirked.

Draco rested his chin in his other hand. “You know…I’ve been thinking I should have a party. Set a big bonfire in the yard. Burn up the stuff that the Death Eaters and Voldemort ruined. Not all of it, obviously, or I might as well just take an _Incendio_ to the whole Manor, but that dining room table has got to go, centuries-old or not.”

“Can you just burn your parents’ stuff like that?” Neville asked. He pushed between Draco and Ginny’s friendly hand-holding to reach for the dish of crusty garlic bread.

“It’s my stuff now. My father did a bunk and the Ministry says it has officially passed to me. So I can burn the place to the bloody foundations if I like. I’m not going to do that, because I’m far too well-bred to ever do anything so gauche as to be homeless, but there’ll be plenty to set flames to even without the house going up. I’ll need help for this level of sheer destruction, though. It’ll have to be a big party. We’ll need invitations.”

Neville winced a little, not being the sort to really get wild, but Ginny’s eyes went wide with excitement. “Can there be firewhiskey?”

Draco grinned, then bent down and pressed a kiss to her gleaming red hair. “By the vat, you tigress.”

*

The third day after the battle found Harry seated in a mildly depressing parlor in Cokeworth.

Severus Snape had weathered the end of the war with a visible, profound, immovable shock. The whole afternoon, Harry watched him move around his little house in Spinner’s End as if he were in a dream that might crash to an end with the bleating of a Tempus Charm at any moment. He touched walls as he walked down the hall, clutched the tea things too tightly, studied Harry as if he were likely to disappear at any time.

It took Harry a bit to figure out why this was. Then he caught Snape with a tiny smile on his face as he looked out the window at dirty cobblestones and narrow, unimpressive homes and realized that Snape had not expected to survive the war, much like Harry himself. Now that he had, he was doing what Harry had spent most of the first evening after the battle doing—becoming familiar once more with the trappings of life, reminding himself that he was still here, that these things could still be seen by him, even belong to him.

“So, Mr. Potter,” Snape said, and the words were bitter in a way that seemed mostly for form’s sake, “is there a reason you’re in my sitting room drinking Darjeeling?”

“I don’t think the potion is gone,” Harry said.

“Once more you lack any particular subtlety or skill at basic human interaction—” Harry snorted at the hypocrisy of this, as Snape hadn’t even said _hello_ when he let Harry in, but didn’t otherwise interrupt, “—but I’ll indulge you for now. How do you know?”

Harry shifted uncomfortably. “I still have feelings. Pity, maybe. Affection.” Then he sighed. It didn’t do him any good to be here if he wasn’t going to be honest. “Romantic feelings, all right? I still want him.”

Snape laid a long finger against his temple, resting his chin against the other folded fingers. “So?”

“So? So you said the potion would be gone!”

“It is gone.”

“So why do I still feel this way?”

“Because you cannot experience nearly a year of intense interaction with someone and not be changed by it, you idiot. The potion removes impediments to feelings. That is all. The only change is that the impediments have returned.”

“Okay, then why aren’t the impediments keeping me from feeling this way?”

“Because you legitimately care about him. The potion does not create emotions, Mr. Potter. It simply helps you ignore all the myriad barriers that prevent those emotions from being embraced. The potential for this love was in you all along, Mr. Potter, or it never would have occurred, potion or no. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Harry just sat there numbly.

“Imagine this,” Snape said, rolling his eyes as if to say _I cannot believe you need me to clarify this._ “Imagine you and Draco had never started things off so horridly in your first year. Imagine he’d been as syrupy sweet to you as Miss Granger or Mr. Weasley. Imagine you were given a chance to become friends. And later, once the travails of spot-laden puberty had passed, might not your natural chemistry have led you to become something more?”

Harry frowned.

Snape continued, still with the exasperated mien he got when he felt he was explaining the obvious, “So this was always a possibility, perhaps even a likelihood—it must be or you would never have felt this way for him, even with the potion at full potency. It’s merely that Voldemort and Death Eaters and the boy’s detestable father and a far too lenient upbringing changed him in a way that blocked you from seeing what might have been. All of those things vanished with the potion, and have returned now.”

“I did see all those things before,” Harry said slowly.

“They merely held no weight in your mind,” Snape snapped. “None of them _stopped_ you. You were seeing a falsely-immaculate image of Draco and it has ended. You will see the Mark on his arm now, Mr. Potter, and it will bother you. Whether your real feelings for him can survive this clearer picture is entirely up to you.”

“I’m honestly in love with who I think he is. But that might not actually be who he really is. That’s what you’re saying?” Harry put his head in his hands.

“Yes. You should perhaps take some time to consider this,” Snape said politely. “Elsewhere, though, I should think.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Stay away from him until you figure it out. Don’t go to the party.”

“What?” Harry blinked. “How do you know about the party?”

Harry had heard about it from Ron and Hermione, both of whom had received fancy letters that included…well, kind of a summons, actually, to the Manor in just over a week. BYOFlame-retardant clothing, apparently. Harry had not received any letter, and although he’d been surprisingly hurt by this, he’d understood completely. Draco had every rational reason to never want to see him again.

“I was invited,” Snape said, looking a little offended that the possibility hadn’t occurred to Harry. “Although only God knows why. Oh, wipe that horrified look off of your dimwitted face, Potter. I’ve no intention of going. Hanging about with a crowd of drunken, horny teenagers dancing around a circle of flames like demons sounds like hell. It’s nearly biblical in its depiction.”

“Yeah. I guess I could see that.”

Snape sighed heavily. “What I say now I say out of hope that Draco may benefit from this, not you, all right? Be sure, Mr. Potter. Be sure that you can love the real him, the boy he is now before you act. Give it proper thought before you do anything. If you decide you can, I wish you both the best.”

Harry blinked into black eyes that showed not even a single whit of mockery.

“You’ve had a hard road, I’ll admit,” Snape said, the words coming out like they tasted bad, like he didn’t want to cut Harry any slack at all, but felt it must be done. “You didn’t have easy choices, and sending him away was, I believe, the necessary course of action. But you didn’t see what it did to him. And you will never be responsible for making him feel that way again. So be sure before you open your mouth. Just this once, think first. Because if you break his heart again, I’ll kill you myself.”

Harry found himself nodding. “Yeah, all right. That sounds fair.” He stood. “I’ll be careful with him, Snape. He’s not over it yet, I get that.”

“Not over it?”

“Well, he’s gone to all this effort to become a better person and all, so he’s obviously still wrapped up in the relationship not succeeding.”

Snape’s face twisted into a mask of scorn. “Not everything is about you, Potter, you arrogant little beetle. Have you considered that all of his efforts may be intended to help him live without you? That perhaps _he_ no longer wants _you_? Now get out of my house. I’ve gardening I want to get to.”

Harry found himself unceremoniously dumped on the front stoop, a little mystified by the last few minutes. Maybe it did make him arrogant, but he’d thought part of the new Draco was about wanting Harry to love him again. Draco had _said_ as much, back at Grimmauld Place, that he wasn’t worthy of Harry but was trying, and he could be better if Harry would just give him a chance.

Snape’s insinuation—that Draco’s changes were part of an attempt to leave his mistakes (like trusting Harry) in the past—gave Harry mixed feelings. The idea that Draco had made the changes for himself and not Harry was very good news; Harry strongly disliked the idea of the other boy changing himself in the hopes that Harry would like him. However, he found himself rather upset at the idea that Draco had decided to shed Harry with his old skin, and he wondered just how successful the process had been. Based on what had happened in The Chapel at the Manor a few days ago, he had thought Draco still had some feelings for him, but maybe it was time he stop making assumptions.

He clearly wasn’t very good at it.

As he headed for the alley to apparate back to Grimmauld, he wasn’t sure what made him more uncomfortable: the notion that this new, stronger version of Draco existed because he no longer needed Harry or the idea of Snape in a flowered hat planting tomatoes.

*

Draco had spent nearly a year living first in a dingy, badly-lit house with three people who alternately groped him and scorned him, and then trapped in a single room, alone with poisonous thoughts for days at a time, eating food stored in a bag.

It was probably perfectly understandable that he went a little off the deep end enjoying his newfound freedom.

He ate rich desserts for breakfast and got take-away Muggle meals for the rest. He didn’t sleep much; he was too busy racing Ginny on broomsticks through the forest at the back half of the Manor property or playing Wizard’s Chess with Neville or showing both of them the house and grounds. They had picnics in the May sunshine, swam in the indoor pool (the memory of Ginny’s shouted “Get in here, the water is _warm,_ you daft bastards!” never failed to make him smile) and stayed up late listening to the wireless and dancing while drinking massive amounts of his father’s most expensive Scotch (the best _fuck you_ that Draco could really think up on such short notice).

He spent two entire days in his pajamas, completely blitzed on some of the most excellent vintages his wine cellar could produce. When he sobered, he learned from a bill of sale in the post that he had somehow ordered a television that would be delivered the next day. After getting a thorough (and baffling) lecture about electricity and cables and whatnot from a local Muggle in a shop, he, Neville and Ginny finally figured out a way to use magic to get power to the damn thing. That was how they began eavesdropping on an American girl who put her stories out into the world under the title _My So-Called Life._ He liked her a great deal and was quite distressed when he learned that her story wasn’t real but a play of sorts, and a play that had been over for years, for that matter. But then he found _Doctor Who_ and realized he didn’t give a shit if telly shows were real or not as long as he got to watch more of them.

He’d been forced to stop watching the episode “Midnight” halfway through, however. He’d had enough of seeing fear goad people into contemplating inhuman acts.

He even accepted Ginny’s invite to a family dinner at the Burrow in the upcoming week.

During the second week, things settled a bit. He’d gotten some of the need for excess out of his system and begun to focus on the party. People were replying enthusiastically, and that meant a crowded house and lots of things to do. Arranging for food, for the vats of firewhiskey Ginny had requested, a band, acquiring extra house-elves to help Miffy handle the workload. Draco, Neville, and Ginny spent much of the following week roaming the Manor looking for things to set on fire.

His friends were very circumspect about asking why a particular thing should be burnt; he appreciated this more than he could say. It was incredibly difficult to even think _this is the ottoman over which Greyback raped that blood-traitor woman to the cheers of the others before he snapped her neck in his teeth,_ let alone say it out loud to the others. On a few occasions he couldn’t help getting visibly upset, and they wisely chattered on about silly things to give him time to collect himself.

In every room they swung wide the curtains until the shadows fled and the Manor felt like his childhood home for the first time in years.

He was happy.

Sort of. Mostly. Kind of. Well, sometimes he was happy. The rest of the time, he was trying too hard to keep the thought of Potter—and that kiss—strictly out of his mind.

Ginny and Neville had resoundingly agreed that Draco should not invite Potter. He was the Savior of the Wizarding World—someone would invite him to a party at some point in his life, so it wasn’t like they were stealing the experience from him. Granted, Draco was determined that this party would be a once-in-a-lifetime event and that anyone who didn’t make it would regret it forever, but Potter missing it wasn’t Draco’s problem.

Draco’s only problem, in fact, was that on nights when he couldn’t find sleep, he sometimes weakened and took his cock in hand with the memory of a hundred fucks running through his mind. Potter throwing him onto the table and spreading his thighs. Potter easing him open from behind. Waking up to find Potter already moving slick and hot within him. Potter, Potter, Potter. But it was always that kiss in The Chapel that pushed him over so that he arched and came hard and opened his eyes to find slick semen on his belly and self-disgust in his throat.

*

It didn’t take Harry long to realize that Snape was right. That Ron was right. Hermione was right. That Ginny, who had punched him in the face hard enough to break his nose (before sullenly healing it when Mrs. Weasley shouted at her), was right.

He needed to stay away from Draco.

That did not, however, mean that Draco would stay away from him. Or that dumb luck would not try to screw with them afresh.

Harry had been rattling around in Grimmauld Place for a week and a half, avoiding the constant press of Prophet reporters, collecting massive piles of unopened letters from fans (he had no desire to read them, but just throwing them out seemed rude), and enjoying long, uninterrupted visits from people he was just starting to believe might not be taken away from him.

He’d seen Lupin—whose severed hand would be replaced with a magical prosthesis as soon as the stump healed enough to stand the pressure of the spell—and Tonks, who brought baby Teddy and were both happily enjoying parenthood. Kingsley had come by, as interim Minister of Magic, to offer him a job as an Auror when he got his N.E.W.T.S. and to thank him for doing such a great job. McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, and Madam Pomfrey had all come by for tea, and they’d spent a surprisingly amusing hour together once he realized that they were all quite a bit more fun when they weren’t pretending to be paragons of Do-The-Right-Thing (also known as teachers). He’d seen Luna at her house and looked at Dirigible Plums and met up with Dean and Seamus to talk Quidditch for hours.

But as much as he loved seeing all of them, they weren’t his family. So when Mrs. Weasley firecalled and told him that his presence was requested (read: demanded) that night, dinner at the Burrow seemed like a great idea.

But Mrs. Weasley hadn’t known about Harry and Draco’s relationship until the battle, when Draco had shouted it to the heavens. Harry hadn't explained much about the breakup, despite Mrs. Weasley's occasional not-so-subtle prying. In fact, wimp of a Gryffindor as he was, he'd sort of made it sound like he and Draco were on peaceable terms and that they'd both moved on. So it wasn’t a ploy to get them back together. Mrs. Weasley simply hadn’t thought to mention that she had invited Harry because he was always invited to big events with their family.

Which was how he ended up arriving at the Burrow only to learn that the dinner was meant to help celebrate and thank Draco for saving Fred’s life.

“I should go,” Harry whispered to Hermione, who started to reply but then fell silent when Mrs. Weasley returned to the living room with goop in a jar. She took a few fingers of the stuff and slopped it on his head. She was trying to get his hair to lie flat—a project she never seemed to give up on despite the fact that it never worked.

“Much better,” she said doubtfully, when she’d finished. “Now you two straighten up in here please, and be quick about it. The guest of honor will be here soon!” And she swished back to the kitchen with the air of a general preparing for battle.

Fred and George were outside pruning something-or-other, and Ron had been put in charge of making a banner that said thank you in some manner, and Bill and Charlie and Percy were all getting ready upstairs, having arrived somewhat late (on purpose, Harry suspected, and wished he’d thought of it). Mr. Weasley, of course, was in his workroom, fiddling with some Muggle device.

“He’s going to hate that I’m here,” Harry hissed to Hermione, hitting a pillow with more force than was really needed to get the dust out, and then watching while Hermione used her wand to vanish the dust out of the air. “It’s going to ruin what should be a good night for him.”

“So tell Mrs. Weasley that you have to leave because Draco hates you for falling in love with him because of a potion, which led to you becoming a little possessed, so you dumped him in an appallingly horrid way, then kissed him not once, but twice, leading to the most convoluted mess of tangled feelings ever. She’ll probably kick you out herself.”

Harry bit his lip. The thought of Mrs. Weasley kicking him out was not a pleasant one. She was the closest thing to a mother he had, and the look he could imagine in her eyes? Awful.

“I could pretend to get sick,” he said thoughtfully.

“Coward,” Hermione said, or at least that was what he thought she said, as she was now shoulders-deep in the curio cabinet in the corner, carefully springing away still more dust.

“I know.” He sighed. “I don’t know how to act around him.”

“Be polite and friendly, but not too friendly.” She slid him a cheeky smile. “And maybe refrain from having sex with him on the table in front of everyone this time. I’m not sure how it would go over with this crowd.”

“Ha ha,” Harry said sourly.

Then Mrs. Weasley shouted for everyone to get in the kitchen, and there was the heavy tread of three Weasleys coming downstairs, and three more coming in from outside. Harry trailed behind Hermione with a rapidly increasing sense of doom, arriving in time to see the fireplace glow green and emit three figures, one right after another.

The first was Ginny, who kissed her mother and wrinkled her nose at Ron’s banner, which had misspelled ‘gratitude’ rather egregiously. Then Neville popped out, looking tall and confident, shaking hands with people and saying hello.

And then Draco was there, looking slim and elegant in black trousers that cupped his spectacular arse and a long-sleeved, gray Henley that perfectly matched his eyes and showcased his lean belly, revealing just a hint of collarbone. His hair was different, Harry realized with a shock. It was slicked back, sort of like he’d worn it as a child, but with far less product, so it was smooth and thick and out of the way except for a few loose strands that curled temptingly over his forehead and the nape of his neck. Styled like that, it brought attention to the high cheekbones and fine jaw and pink, lovely lips.

Harry felt a bolt of pure lust spear through him. At least he knew that his view of Draco’s attractiveness hadn’t been idealized under the potion.

The brat was just that fucking beautiful.

He was smiling now, pressed tightly in Mrs. Weasley’s arms, seeming just a bit unsure about what to do with her tears, and then Mr. Weasley was pumping his hand in a violent handshake. George actually pressed a kiss to Draco’s temple before offering him the run of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes for a free shopping spree.

That was the moment when Draco saw Harry and fell abruptly still. They stared at each other for a moment, a wealth of weight and uncertainty and heat between them until Fred gave a low whistle and Mrs. Weasley hit him on the arm, her expression slowly falling into lines of worry. Everyone else waited in thickly curious tension.

Draco nodded once. “Potter.”

Harry cleared his throat. “Draco.”

Then the eye contact broke and the noise and energy tentatively resumed until food was being slopped onto plates and people were sitting in a crush around the table. Harry ended up several places down and on the opposite side from Draco, and it took a great deal of willpower not to just stare at the other boy, who seemed to gleam pale and lovely beneath the warm glow of the fading evening sunset beyond the windows. Harry took little glimpses instead, telling himself he was being subtle as he watched Draco wipe his lips with a napkin, grin at something George was saying, offer a wry comment about Ron’s spelling (which Ron found uproariously funny—he’d not been joking when he said that he’d was taking back most of the meanness on his side of their antagonism, and Draco seemed to have let it all go as well). Draco listened to Hermione expound about some magical text or another, and he tugged Ginny’s hair and gave her a kiss when she called him _my Draco,_ which made Harry’s hands curl into fists beneath the table.

 _My_ Draco _,_ he thought, and then felt abruptly ashamed. He had no right.

The only person who didn’t merit any real attention was Harry, and he felt the absence keenly. Not that anyone else tuned him out; he was as included by the Weasleys as ever. But Draco didn’t acknowledge him again, and he pointedly avoided looking at Harry, and even surrounded by redheads who loved him, Harry might very well have been alone.

Mr. Weasley gave a speech at the end that left Draco bright red and uncharacteristically shy, and Neville teased him by saying that he never thought he’d see the day when Draco Malfoy got too much attention.

The only really awkward part, from Harry’s point of view, was when Mrs. Weasley asked Harry if he was still having the nightmares. He'd woken all of them up a few times when he'd stayed at the Burrow immediately after the battle, and it was this that had convinced him to head back to Grimmauld.

“Er, a bit, yeah. But I’m okay.”

“Are you sure, love?”

“They were bad for a time,” Harry admitted. He was underplaying a little—he’d woken up screaming several times a night the first week, but the nightmares had slackened off quite quickly. Or rather, the dreams had changed into something that was equally unbearable, albeit in a not-screaming kind of way. He hedged. “But they’re getting better.”

“And you know that you can still stay here, Harry, right? You don’t have to stay alone at Grimmauld Place just so you don’t wake us.”

“We love waking up to high-pitched shrieking,” George said. “It’s like Percy still lives at home and someone wandered into his room without permission.”

“Shut it,” Percy said, good-naturedly.

“It’s only natural, I’d think,” Mrs. Weasley said, ignoring her offspring. “After all you lot have been through.”

“Ron has them too,” Harry said quickly, and Ron gave him a dirty look and mouthed _thanks, mate._

“We know. He cries,” George added.

“The wee tyke,” Fred said, wiping an imaginary tear away.

“I do not!”

Draco still didn’t look at Harry, but he’d stopped eating and was twirling his fork thoughtfully.

When brooms were brought out for an after-dinner match of Quidditch, Harry decided this was a good time to make his escape. As Weasleys ran around outside to set up the brooms and hoops, Harry hung back, getting his cloak from the living room and preparing his excuses.

“You came,” Draco said from behind him, and Harry whirled.

“Yeah,” he managed. “Well, not for…I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

“Oh.”

“Not that I was avoiding you. I mean, I am, because you told me to…but I’m not avoiding you because I don’t want to see you. I’m…well, I’m trying to give you space. Not that I’m assuming you need it! I just…Christ, I’m really trying not to make anything worse, and that seems to be all I’m doing.”

Draco began to grin. “Easy there, Potter, before you strain yourself. It’s fine that you’re here.”

“Oh. Good.”

“So why are you going?”

“It’s a special night. I didn’t want to ruin it for you.”

“You aren’t. Believe it or not, I can be in a room with you without breaking down into little pieces.”

“I know.”

“I was just surprised to see you.”

“I feel bad about that. When I realized what was meant to happen tonight, I tried to…”

“Don’t. Really. I’m starting to see that what Mrs. Weasley wants, she gets.”

“That’s a fact,” Harry replied fervently.

“She rather thinks of you as a son, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Harry fiddled with the button on his cloak a little nervously. “I’ve been very lucky to have her in my life. She was the one who made my birthday cakes and gave me haircuts and got me my watch when I turned seventeen.”

Draco nodded, looking thoughtful. Harry rather liked the look on him. He was tempted to say so. Hell, he was tempted to do a lot more than that. _Look at the way the small of his back flows into his arse_ , he thought. _Look at the long legs in those excellently cut trousers, and try not to remember what it feels like to have them wrapped around your hips._

“Did your mother make your birthday cakes?” Harry asked hurriedly.

“Malfoys don’t have cakes on natal days.”

“Oh. What do they do?”

“The usual trappings of the filthy rich, I suppose. Trust fund additions, an obscenely unnecessary and expensive gift that will become a family heirloom that no one will really care about, a reiteration of the expectations which come with aging, a kiss on the cheek from the mother and an awkward handshake from the father. I did, however, get a watch when I came of age last year. I don’t wear it, because it’s over a century old and worth a fortune. If I’d ever lost it my father would’ve killed me, so it sits in a box in a drawer.”

Harry shook his head slowly. “You’ve come a long way.” He paused, considering the wisdom of going on, then blurted, “This will probably come out all patronizing, and I don’t mean it that way, promise, but I’m proud of you for saving Fred. It was amazing, the way you acted so quickly and did just the right thing.”

“Not you too,” Draco said wryly. “I’m going to start to think there are reasons to be well-behaved.” He paused, and then, although he spoke lightly, he watched Harry carefully, “Besides, I’m not the one who died to stop that monster. Isn’t someone due to give you a leg of lamb or something?”

“The Ministry is throwing me a ball in a few months. I suppose I’ll have to go,” Harry said reluctantly, screwing his face up and making Draco laugh. “That’s not funny. I’ll have to dance.”

“Get some dancing lessons. Quickly. The Savior can’t _still_ look like a fourteen year old trying not to trip over his own robes.”

“Argh. I hate dancing.”

“It’s not so bad. If you give it a proper chance, you might even like it. That can happen.”

“True. I never thought I’d see the day when you were having dinner with the Weasleys and enjoying it, but here you are. You’ve shed your snobbery, Draco.”

“Yeah, I have.” He aimed a wry, conspiratorial look at Harry, like he was imparting a deadly secret. “I’ve even got a telly.”

Harry laughed. “Do you? How’d you manage that?”

“It wasn’t easy.” Draco hesitated, then launched into the story of the perplexed Muggle shopkeeper who’d explained how to hook up the cable, only to have to back up to explain what the cable was, only to have to back up and explain how to plug things in, and then back still further, until nearly two hours had gone by and he was telling Draco about electricity and some man named Benjamin Franklin with a death wish and a love of kites.

Harry watched him become easier with the telling, his body language becoming more natural. He smiled back when Harry couldn’t keep from laughing, and the whole moment felt real and warm and happy.

From the front yard, Fred yelled, “Get out here, you mad blokes! We’re starting!”

Draco straightened from where he’d been leaning against the arm of a chair. “Ah, that’s me, then. It’s a shame you have to go.”

Suddenly Harry didn’t want to. He really didn’t want to. He wanted to remain right here in this little bubble of a moment with Draco, listening to him speak and watching him move and grin as his gray eyes flashed with crafty humor. He wanted to step closer and remind himself of how good Draco felt next to him, maybe reach down and tip that lovely face up so he could press a kiss—

“No, I’ve definitely got to go,” Harry said, and sucked in a deep breath. “I wish I could stay, truly, but I think it’s for the best.”

Draco’s face sobered. “Oh. Sorry. I kept you—”

“No,” Harry said quickly, firmly. “That’s not…I want to be here. I really do. It’s just that I don’t know where the lines are yet and I’d rather be safe than sorry when it comes to interacting with you. I’m trying really hard to do right by you.”

Draco looked at him steadily for a long minute. Harry wished he could hear what he was thinking. Finally, Draco said, “We have friends in common now.”

“Yeah.”

“It would probably be good if we could figure out how to be nice to each other like this on a regular basis.”

“You’re right. I just don’t know how we do that.”

Draco licked his lips—a nervous gesture, Harry thought—then said, “Come to my party. It’s on Saturday. We’ll try the friend thing.”

“Are you sure?” Harry asked slowly.

“It’s going to be a behemoth of a night,” Draco said, smiling faintly. “We probably won’t even see each other. But if you’re the only wizard in three counties under the age of thirty who hasn’t been invited, that’s rather a step backwards, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.”

“So feel free to show. If you like.”

“Thank you. I will.”

“Good. I’ll tell this lot that you’ve gone.” Draco cleared his throat and gestured at the door with a thumb. “And I should…”

“Yeah. I should too.”

Draco hesitated in the doorway for a second, then headed out, letting the screen slap the frame loudly behind him. Distantly, Harry heard Fred yell, “Finally!”

Then, feeling very much like he was constantly doing the right thing even though it made him want to punch something, he headed for the fireplace to floo home.

*

So he liked the new Draco.

While he waited for Saturday to come, Harry thought long and hard about the whole subject and came down squarely on the side of one unavoidable fact: He liked the Draco who’d bought a telly and saved a Weasley and patted Ginny on the bottom and loved a mouse. It frightened him to say more than ‘like’ even though the feeling was still plainly present, because he still fervently believed that he did not actually _know_ the other boy well enough yet, not in the real and honest way you had to know someone before you could love them so it would stick.

But, oh, he liked what he saw of the new Draco, and even better, all the best parts of the old Draco were still there. The snark for instance, that spouted from the mouth that drove Harry to both rage and lust. There was the sly delivery of sarcasm and cheekiness, the sharp mind capable of drawing connections and analyzing motives, and best of all, the sweet, soft vulnerability of the boy hidden beneath the vinegar surface, the boy who wanted nothing more than to be loved.

Really, the only thing that would, conceivably, make Draco an impossible partner was that his moral standing had once been…well, not standing so much as fast asleep on the floor.

But now, after seeing Draco in the battle, fighting grimly, saving lives, standing up to a Voldemort who seemed to have the win solely in hand, Harry was struck by the realization that the new Draco might even be better than the idealized version Harry had fallen for at Grimmauld.

The boy had flaws, Harry was certain. Everyone did. But those flaws were things that Harry sort of liked, even as they annoyed him. They were the right kind of flaws for Harry, he thought, if that made any sense.

A lot of people would be unable to stand that much sarcasm—it made Harry laugh even when he wanted to smack the other boy. A lot of people would detest any whining—to Harry it was a little bit cute in small doses—and there was far less of it now. The prickly, sensitive hide? The irreverence and disrespect about Gryffindors and Potters and the Savior and all of that crap? When faced with a world that thought the sun shined out of his arse, Harry found he desperately needed people who would call him on his shit. And that was one thing Draco had never, ever had a problem doing.

These thoughts were swiftly beginning to settle into a decision, but he wasn’t quite there yet, and the uncertainty of how to handle it all without hurting Draco was wearing him down.

And that was how he came to be lying on his back on the floor in front of the refrigerator in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place when Hermione walked in late on Saturday evening so they could go to Draco’s party together.

“Hi,” she said, smiling down at him. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

“I’m depressed.”

“Oh? Is the refrigerator empty? No, that can’t be what’s bothering you, you’re not Ron.”

“I’m serious.”

“That’s an interesting place to contemplate life.”

“I have problems that I have to talk about. Get down here.”

“I’m in a dress, Harry. You get up _here._ ”

With a sigh that was meant to tell her just how unreasonable she was being, Harry got up and sat at the table.

“You’re covered in dust,” she said, wrinkling her nose at him.

“That’s because the floor is dirty,” he said, deeply morose.

“I’m sure glad you cleared that up for me.” She was laughing at him. Well, wasn’t that just his life? And then he heard Ron at the front door, yelling that the Burrow was packed with his brothers getting ready for the party and he had no desire to have them tell him about how he’d never get laid if he dressed like _that—_

“Oh, hello,” he said, coming into the kitchen, blushing a bit when he saw his girlfriend. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and dirty trainers, and Harry thought that his brothers were probably telling the truth about the whole not-getting-laid thing, considering the look Hermione gave him at the outfit.

She didn’t say anything about it, however. Instead, she pointed at Harry. “He’s depressed.”

“Oh. Still Draco?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Oi,” Harry said, but what was the point in lying? It was true.

“Let me guess,” Ron said. “You realized you’re crazy about him.”

“Yes.”

“But you’re scared that you can’t trust it.”

“Yes.”

“Because even though he seems great now, as you get to know him without the potion coloring things and seeing the changes he’s made, you might find you’re not a great fit after all.”

“Yes.”

“But you think you might actually like him for who he really is now, which is what’s making it hard to stay away from him.”

“Yes,” Harry said, rather suspiciously. “Are you in my brain?”

“No,” Ron said. “I’ve been listening to Hermione wax on about you ever since you spent half of dinner at my parents’ place staring at him.”

“I did not spend half of dinner—”

“Two-thirds, I would’ve said,” Hermione added.

“And now you’re going to his party, but because you’re basically a nice guy and you don’t want to hurt him, you don’t have the first clue how to act around him. Which means you’re all nervous and sweaty and frustrated and it’s all far too confusing so you’re depressed about it and thinking you just won’t even go.”

“Stop doing that,” Harry said, scowling.

“Give it time,” Ron said, slightly more gentle. “Be nice. Be kind. Tell him a funny story. Don’t talk about what happened before, and for Merlin’s sake, don’t fuck him. You’ll figure the rest out.”

Hermione smiled at her boyfriend. “You’re being very insightful, Ron.”

“Can there be reward sex after the party?” he asked.

“If you’re not wearing those trainers when you make a move? Probably.”

Harry’s scowl deepened. “You two are not real friends. Real friends sympathize. They mope with you. They feel your pain. They never mock you for it.”

“Real friends help you kill things,” Ron said cheerfully, and Harry’s scowl became a full-on glare. Ron had a chance for sex and he didn’t even have to dress like a proper human being. Of course he was happy; his life was bloody perfect. He didn’t even do Harry the courtesy of shutting up. “And after real friends help you kill things, the mockery is how they get you back. Is that what you’re wearing?”

“I hate you,” Harry grumbled, and headed upstairs to shower and change clothes.

*

Say what you wanted about Draco’s social skills, but Harry had to admit the kid knew how to throw a party.

The music was loud and heavy, the lighting low, the Manor just slightly too warm with the crush of bodies in the halls, the food delicious, the alcohol liberal and varied, and people were having such a good time that they weren’t even in a rush to head for the lawn to burn the large stacks of furniture, fabrics, and items waiting there.

The worst part of the evening was the embarrassingly large cheer that swept through the crowd when Harry, Hermione and Ron arrived at the gates and began walking down the drive. It did not abate for several minutes, and for a moment it was nearly frightening as dozens of people bore down on them, but then the figures in the night resolved partially into recognizable faces, and suddenly it wasn’t just a mob but also Luna and Seamus and Fred and George and countless other familiar people who wanted to pat him and hug him and offer him a drink (including Tim Heatherly, one of the Hufflepuff boys that Harry had slept with nearly two years ago now, who gave him a brief smile and a wink).

Eventually they were allowed inside, and the excitement of his entrance faded as the students from Hogwarts remembered that they knew him and that he wasn’t a perfect symbol of peace, and in fact, sometimes they didn’t even like him all that much, regardless of what he’d managed to pull out of his arse a couple weeks ago. They were all kind enough to drag away any strangers glomming on to Harry, Hermione, and Ron, and Harry was so grateful for this service that he considered himself well paid for the whole dying thing.

Then it took him an hour to get through the entrance hall and figure out where the food was. Cho Chang bumped into him and offered to show him the way, and their conversation moved easily, aided, no doubt, by the sheer volume of alcohol she had clearly imbibed. She didn’t lead him to the buffet so much as bump into it, but that was all right, as he was able to catch the pitcher of red liquid she nearly catapulted into the crowd. So he helped himself to some chips while she talked about being home in Scotland with her family, and then he talked about going back for his N.E.W.T.S. and it was all very bland and pleasant.

He spent an enjoyable half-hour with Seamus and Dean yelling about Quidditch, and then Ron joined them and they did a couple of shots, and then Dean went off making out with a seventh-year Ravenclaw who looked vaguely familiar, leaving the rest of them to poke friendly fun behind his back.

He caught sight of Neville once, who raised a hand in welcome but was then borne away by a mass of people, and twice he bumped into Ginny, who patted him on the nose, apologized semi-drunkenly for hitting him, and then told him that if she had to break his nose again, it would stay that way forever. At one point he realized that Luna was the girl sitting next to him waving her arms gently in the air in complete contrast to the beat of the music, and maybe it was that he was on his fourth firewhiskey, but she was making quite a bit more sense than usual.

And through it all, he kept one eye out for Draco.

Once, he thought he saw the gleam of white-blonde hair, but by the time he whirled around, it had gone.

So he shrugged and told himself it didn’t bother him and went back to having fun.

Near midnight, the music abruptly lowered in volume. People looked around in confusion, then fell silent, because Draco was climbing the stone stairs that overlooked the Entrance Hall. Ginny hovered nearby, talking softly to someone Harry couldn’t see, and in fact, he kind of couldn’t see Ginny either, because Draco was startlingly perfect.

He was back in those black leather pants that fit like a second skin, and he stood in heavy black boots with thick tread and laces that ran up to his knees. He wore a black muscle shirt, revealing exactly the lean muscles it was meant to advertise: pale, firm shoulders, a flat stomach, a sleek back. The Dark Mark wasn't visible, and Harry figured Draco had gone for a glamour, probably a good choice considering what they were here to celebrate. The shirt also showed off fine, graceful collarbones that led up to that pretty throat, and Harry’s gaze couldn’t have seen anyone else for a million dollars, because he’d caught Draco’s face, and the brat was wearing the fucking eyeliner again. His angular features looked more delicate with the make-up, his eyes larger, his hair and skin paler. He looked tough and wild and bold and sexy and Harry actually felt something in him clench at the very sight of the boy.

It was almost like the brat was actively trying to kill him.

Someone leaned into his ear—he had no idea who, until he recognized Ron’s voice—and said, “Wipe the drool, mate.”

Harry lifted a finger, and yes, there was an actual little bit of drool, but that was bound to happen sometimes when someone’s mouth dropped open at seeing something miraculous, so Harry refused to feel embarrassed.

“And now, before the main event, a few little details to manage,” Draco called, his voice lifting effortlessly over the crowd of waiting partiers who cheered at his words. He waved a hand, grinning, to settle them down, and then continued. “First, a token warning to the light-fingered. Don’t steal anything on your way home, people. You’re in Malfoy Manor, remember, and my ancestors are vindictive bastards. You don’t want to find out the hard way if the thing you’re grabbing is cursed to end your ability to orgasm forever.”

There was some uncertain tittering from the crowd—the Malfoy name was infamous and no one thought he was joking. But Draco didn’t let the mood sour. He continued with a blinding smile. “Now, the rules for the main event. We will start with the figure outside on the lawn; don’t worry, you’ll know it when you see it, but you must wait until we’re all there in a big circle. Then, as one, the group will, in a neat and orderly manner, set it just a little bit on fire. Incendiary Charms only please, and if anyone uses fiendfyre, I will track you down and make you pay in a most unbecoming way.”

Everyone laughed and he gave them a moment to settle. Harry laughed as well, but mostly because he was certain that Draco still wasn’t joking, whatever the crowd might think this time. The shining boy on the staircase hadn't been completely reformed—and Harry found he quite liked it.

“After that, anything you find on the lawn is fair game. The grounds, trees and house have all been coated with protective spells, so you’d have to try really hard to set anything on fire that isn’t meant to be that way, but since I’m trying on this new maturity thing, I’m instituting a buddy system to protect the hapless and the drunk, which is probably most of us by this point. You are responsible for your buddy! Do not set your buddy on fire! Do not let your buddy set you on fire! If you or your buddy is a on a different kind of fire, there are bedrooms upstairs. Allons-y!”

With a roar of approval, people grabbed each other and spilled outside to see what the figure was. Harry heard the laughter first, and then he was propelled by the crowd around the edge of the house to the back lawn.

Arranged on a post in the center of the huge grassy pasture was an immense corn-husk effigy of the Dark Lord, who, incidentally, wore a snake wrapped round his head tied in a big girly bow. Harry found himself shaking his head, unable to keep a few chuckles in, well aware that Hermione and Ron were shaking themselves near to death with giggles nearby.

Everyone waited as Draco stepped onto a low crate. “Everyone here? Everyone ready? Wands out, people!”

Harry pulled his wand with the others, waiting with a surprising bit of excitement in his gut, and then heard Draco yell, “Light that bitch up!”

Flame shot through the air from a hundred directions at once to a deafening chorus of _Incendio_. The effigy went up with a frighteningly loud _whoompf_ and the night glowed orange and bright, billowing with heat and smoke and screams as people cheered and danced. Then everyone was scrambling to throw other things at the feet of the effigy—rugs, chairs, tapestries, and someone was floating an immense table up into the rush of fire—and everything was loud and hot and Harry felt, for the very first time, that he had not only survived Voldemort, he had _won._ It was a heady feeling, so powerful it rocked him. The world had tipped on its axis, revealing that there was still hope, still possibility, and he thought it again, looking at the burning figure, wonderfully exhilarated: _I beat you. I won._

“Need a buddy?”

Harry looked up, blinking, and realized Tim was there. “Oh,” he said dumbly, not remotely sure how to handle this, as they’d never been serious and hadn’t talked in over a year, and Harry was pretty sure Tim was going to ask if he wanted to hook up. Harry wasn’t sure how to prevent that from happening without taking the risk of embarrassing himself in case he was wrong. But then a smaller hand found his, and Draco formed out of the flickering lights and darkness.

“Sorry, handsome, he’s with me tonight,” Draco said, and spun on his heel, towing Harry with him.

Harry gave a smile in Tim’s unhappy direction that was probably too pleased to be polite, then played catch up.

“Wow,” he said, “You’re the best person ever. How did you know I needed saving?”

Draco threw his head back and laughed, everything about him beautiful and savage in the glow of the fire, weaving them through the crowd effortlessly. “You’re shit at hiding your feelings, Potter. The terror was visible from a mile away.”

“It was very nice of you to rescue me.”

“It was, wasn’t it?”

They had crossed quite a bit of real estate in the space of their brief conversation; Draco had long legs. They leaned against the side of the Manor, their backs against hard stone, and Harry had managed, somehow, to keep his grip on Draco’s hand when they turned to watch the riot of fire and madness whirling before them. And they stood in silence that was comfortable, almost peaceful, just letting the light play across their faces as they caught their breath.

Eventually, without saying a word, they sat on the damp grass in silent agreement, although they couldn’t hold hands as they did so. And the disappointment he felt at releasing those fingers made Harry think _I am in serious trouble._

Finally, Harry sighed. “There goes the last of the head.”

“I’ll miss that bow,” Draco said. He tipped his head back; somehow he’d gotten hold of a bottle of firewhiskey. He passed it over to Harry wordlessly. “Ginny’s idea. I rather adore her.”

“She’s great,” Harry agreed. “Especially when she’s not punching you in the face.”

Draco didn’t say anything, but his eyes had a slightly mischievous gleam to them as he smiled.

Harry found he didn’t much mind the idea of Draco appreciating the idea of Ginny punching him. He felt warm and happy being here with the other boy, and suddenly he had the strangest sensation in his chest. He wanted to tell Draco everything he’d ever thought and believed, wanted to share all of himself.

Because Draco mattered.

All of his doubts and questions faded. This was the new Draco, the one sitting in front of him, and it was this Draco to whom Harry wanted to spill every last secret.

Maybe it wouldn’t guarantee any happy endings, but it was more than enough to take a risk on.

Now if he could just figure out how to say it.

“This whole thing was rather clever, you know,” he said, putting it off. It wasn’t really the time or the place. Even if he did want to hold Draco down and explain it to him and kiss him and convince him. He cleared his throat. “People will be talking about it for a decade.”

One slim shoulder rose and fell in a graceful shrug. “With any luck it’ll reach my father.”

Harry snorted. “When most kids rebel, they take the car without permission for the night. They don’t burn an effigy of their father’s demigod in the yard.”

“What can I say?” Draco murmured. “I’m playing on another level.”

Harry turned to look at him, taking a drink from the bottle as he did so. “You always do.”

Draco met his gaze.

*

The pulse of the party and the roar of the fire seemed to have some mystic power over Draco; his mind felt slow and dreamy, and he could feel his limbs getting loose and vaguely feline from the firewhiskey he’d been nursing. He hadn’t wanted to get drunk, but now he took the bottle back from Potter and took another long slug.

He’d noticed Potter a few times over the course of the night, always in conversation with someone else, always looking strong and casual and handsome, and now the orange light flickered in his glasses, highlighting the faint sheen of sweat on his upper lip and at his temples. He wore a plain black t-shirt over well-cut jeans, simple in the extreme, but it suited him in its quiet masculinity.

“This could possibly be the happiest moment of my life,” Potter said quietly, making Draco swallow. “It used to be the moment when I found out I was a wizard. And don't get me wrong, that was...that letter changed everything for me and in the best way. But this is so much more than that. Right before you saved me from Tim, I was thinking about how this is the first time that I felt like I won, you know? For the last two weeks, I’ve been trying to convince myself that it’s over, that I actually survived, and I think I'm getting there. The nightmares are getting better. But this is…it’s more than survival. It’s joyful. And deserved. And vindictive in all the best ways. I know this party doesn’t have anything to do with me, but all the same, I wanted to thank you for this. Right here, right now, I feel...safe and proud and hopeful in a way I haven’t felt since I saw Hagrid for the first time and got my letter. I have a future again.”

Draco peered at him, wondering at the introspection in his face. Maybe, just maybe, Potter had a point about them not knowing each other all that well back at Grimmauld. Because here was a truth he couldn't have guessed at, something intimate and real. And he was flattered to know it. It warmed him to hear it. Potter was still staring at him, and that warmed him in a different way; heat curled low in his belly.

“Potter,” he said, licking his lips nervously, “I—”

“Draco!” That was Ginny, he realized, and wasn’t sure whether to bless the girl or yell at her. She came striding up, her face suspicious as it lit on Potter, maybe a little worried, and reached down an imperious hand. “We’re pretty much out of ammunition and most everyone’s really drunk. Neville’s thinking it’s time to start herding people back inside before they wander off and end up sleeping in the fields.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Draco gripped her fingers and stood, unsure whether that was disappointment he’d seen in Potter’s face or not. “Potter, consider yourself herded.”

A smile. “Yes, sir.”

Draco started to follow Ginny, then broke away, came back, and without a thought in his head, took Harry’s hand. He squeezed once without looking up, and then tore away, back to Ginny’s side.

“What the heck was that?” she asked, as they made their way around slowly fading fire.

“He said something that made me happy,” Draco replied. “I didn’t want to run off without acknowledging it.”

“What’s going on with you two?”

He shook his head and took another deep drink of firewhiskey. “You’ll know when I figure it out.”

*

The party reached the drunken, sloppy stage not too much longer after that. Most of the responsible types were starting to think of going home, and the rest were all wild-bunch material, dancing in the hallways, taking off shirts, and turning up the music so they could grind against their partners.

Draco planned on being one of the latter; he’d finished that first bottle of firewhiskey an hour ago and begun working his way through another, and the world was spinning pleasantly around him. He was pleased Neville had agreed to be the Designated Apparator, because Draco was way too drunk to apparate anywhere at the moment, and he wasn’t nearly as trashed as some of the others around him.

Although Neville would probably have a hard time apparating people home when he was locked tightly around Hannah Abbot.

“Good for you, mate,” Draco murmured.

He headed down the hall, thinking that he might change out of his boots and go barefoot, because as good as they looked, they weren’t broken in enough yet to be comfortable for this long. On the way, he passed the open door to his father’s study and saw Potter inside, leaning over the desk with a quill in his hand.

“Composing a sonnet?” Draco asked, hovering in the doorway.

Potter smiled before he straightened. He tossed the quill down. “No. I was going to leave you a note. I think I’m going to take off.”

“The night is young.” He took a drink from his bottle to prove it.

“It’s two-thirty in the morning, Draco. That’s not young in anyone’s definition.”

“’My, people do come and go quickly here,’” he quoted, somewhat accurately, he thought, and caught Potter’s surprised glance.

“The Wizard of Oz?” he asked. “How very Muggle of you.”

“It has a wizard in it. Sort of.” He frowned for a second. “There’s definitely witches.”

Potter was grinning at him. “You’re a little pissed, aren’t you?”

“Not remotely,” Draco said, gesturing with his bottle of firewhiskey and dribbling some on the carpet in the process. He looked down at the stain. “That was purposeful.”

Now Potter was outright laughing at him. “I’m sure it was. You, uh, need some help?”

“With what?”

“Getting somewhere?”

“I live here.”

Potter was laughing some more. “I meant maybe you should get some sleep.”

“I’m not in such rough shape as all that.” He straightened away from the door, wobbling only a tiny bit, and made a show of taking several more deep draws on the bottle. “Here, come with me and give me your note from your face while I take my boots off. And stop laughing at me, you boob.”

They made their way through the entrance hall upstairs, passing inebriated couples groping each other in the hallway, and once, when one of those couples separated abruptly at the interruption, Draco was knocked forcibly into Potter, who stood directly behind and put his warm, firm hands on Draco’s hips to steady him. Draco found himself pretending he needed the support more than he really did, leaning back into the touch, finding Potter’s chest hard and strong behind him, letting Potter’s breath graze his ear, and then he couldn’t quite justify the hesitation anymore and straightened. Really, it had gone on too long, couldn’t possibly be passed off as anything but an excuse to stay pressed against Potter.

But as he stepped away, Potter kept pace, and one hand remained on his hip as they proceeded down the hall.

“Where’s your room?” Potter asked, and his voice was low, almost guttural. The sound of it made Draco’s stomach clench.

“Next one down.”

He got there and managed to grasp the doorknob even with his nervous fingers. He went in, stopping in the middle of the room, feeling Potter come to a halt behind him, that hand still resting tantalizingly on his hip. Well, no, not on his hip now, exactly. More just in front of it, right where his muscle shirt met the line of the leather pants, and Potter’s fingers were gently, smoothly, working their way under the fabric of the shirt to trace the edge of his skin.

Draco exhaled hard and felt Potter take a tiny step closer. His head dropped until his mouth was nearly at Draco’s ear. “Are you all right?”

Draco nodded once, and when the faint stubble on Potter’s cheek brushed the shell of his ear he shivered. “You were going to give me a note, right?”

“Out of my face, yes,” Potter said, sounding amused. Hot breath against Draco’s skin sent a tingle down his spine.

“Start talking,” he breathed.

“It was going to start with the traditional greeting.” The mouth sounded closer.

“To whom it may concern,” Draco said knowingly.

A soft puff of laughter, and the lips brushed, ever so lightly, against his ear. “Your name, brat.”

“Oh.” Draco swallowed hard. “And then?”

Potter’s fingers were stroking along the skin of his belly, under his shirt, teasing his waistband. His voice dropped even lower. “Then I was thinking I would tell you that I’m really glad you invited me.”

“That’s very well-mannered of you.”

Another soft chuckle. “Are you surprised?” Potter asked, and Merlin, but Potter’s mouth was _right there,_ right beneath his ear but holding back that last centimeter, and Draco was going to break his face if he didn’t do something with it.

“Considering your behavior at the moment? Yes.”

The lips brushed, so lightly he wasn’t even sure the kiss had happened. Everything in him tightened. Potter sounded like he meant to be teasing, but he all but growled, “And just what is so wrong with my behavior right now?”

“You are accosting my person,” Draco said, rather breathily, silently adding, _and get on with it already._

The mouth lowered again, more firmly this time, all wet tongue and scraping teeth for a slow second before lifting, and Draco whimpered.

“Are you going to ask me to go if I continue?” Potter asked, tone hard and challenging, and Draco whispered, “No.”

“Fuck, yes,” Potter said, and then he was hauling Draco around, throwing him against the door and pushing up against him. Draco cried out, loving the weight of the other boy against him. Potter’s lips descended on his, and the kiss was nothing like the one they’d shared in The Chapel two weeks ago. That had been slow and seductive and sweet. This was furious and demanding, and Potter tilted his head and plundered. Draco submitted instantly, giving him what he wanted, back arching as a firm hand cupped his jaw. The other was wrapped firmly around him, hauling him so close that he could barely breathe. Potter’s hips tilted against his own and Draco held his breath, all but climbing him to get his cock in the right place to rut against Potter’s. One strong thigh came between his and Draco shuddered in gratitude.

That hot mouth released his with an audible sucking sound, and then it was dropping, nipping his jaw, his throat, his ear. Draco’s head fell back and hit the door; he barely noticed. Potter was making hungry gasping sounds, and his left hand was shoving Draco’s shirt up in the back, his palm hot and hard and forceful.

Draco writhed in his arms, riding Potter’s thigh, feeling the bloom of heat and pleasure rising in his belly. The fingers at his back dropped below the line of his pants and he arched, wanting it, needing it desperately.

“Please,” he cried thinly. He felt so empty it nearly hurt.

“I know, little cat. I’ll take care of you. I know what you need.” Potter’s voice was almost unrecognizable. He shoved his hand lower, his fingers brushing the crease between Draco’s buttocks, and Draco worked his hips harder against Potter’s thigh in response. He could feel it starting to build, so slow and distant, and the heat was driving him wild. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was Harry, but the room was spinning, and he couldn’t think, he couldn’t do a damn thing but feel.

Then they were kissing again, eager, hot, sloppy kisses, and Draco begged into Harry’s mouth, going limp and desperate and reactive, and Harry gave a growl that sent a dirty furrow of pleasure straight into his cock.

“Fuck, yes. That’s it. Melt for me. Fuck.” Potter was shoving against him, rocking against him, and Draco held on, blind with pleasure. The words were becoming meaningless as the last of his senses fell away: “I thought that was gone, the melting, I thought that was the potion, but it isn’t, it’s you, Christ, Draco, you’re driving me _mad_.”

Draco’s hips were snapping wildly, caught between Potter’s questing fingertips, which were now grazing the inner curve of one cheek, and Potter’s muscled thigh. His eyes squeezed closed, and he was panting loudly, whimpering, and Potter was bucking against him in turn, and they were making too much noise, far too much noise, but Draco didn’t care—

Potter stopped, and after a second forced Draco still as well.

“What?” he asked impatiently.

“Someone’s coming.”

“Don’t stop,” he moaned. “He’ll go away. He’ll go. Just move. Please.”

Potter eyeballed him from all of two inches away, suddenly narrow and intent.

“Draco?” a voice called, and now Draco knew what Potter had heard. Neville. Who would likely not go away if he was concerned enough to look around for him.

Potter spoke softly. “Call that you’re changing your boots and you’ll be down soon. Try not to sound like you’re getting fucked against the door.”

Draco did all of that, somewhat louder, and then Neville called back agreement.

“Okay,” Draco said, his heart still thundering. “He’s gone.” He lifted his face, pressing a kiss against Harry’s mouth, but Harry didn’t respond.

“What is it now?” Draco asked.

“You’re slurring. Badly. You weren’t before. How pissed are you?”

“Not very.”

Potter looked at him closely. Draco tried to look sober, but he suddenly couldn’t remember what his face felt like when he looked sober, so Potter didn’t buy it. “You’re completely potted, aren’t you? Fuck me.”

“That’s my line,” Draco said, and there it was, the slur that Harry was talking about. Even he heard it that time. Oh, well. It wasn’t conversation he was looking for. “So let me say it. Fuck me, Harry.”

Harry groaned and his hips jerked once, making Draco moan, and for a second, he thought it was going to happen, thought Harry was going to turn him against the wall and bend him over and fuck him until he couldn’t even think anymore. Harry’s hold on him tightened so much it was painful.

But instead, Harry took a very long, deep breath, and then exhaled, a long, drawn-out sigh of suffering, and firmly set Draco away from him, only retaining hold of his hand because Draco wobbled badly without his support.

“Harry?” he asked, stunned.

“I can’t. I want to, oh, God, you have no idea how much, but I can’t do this. You’re completely trashed, and you’re going to hate me in the morning if I do this.”

“Seriously?” Draco’s voice had gone up an octave.

Potter sighed again. “I’ll make you a deal, little cat. If you wake up and there’s something you want from me, come to my place tomorrow, sober, and tell me what it is. If it’s a fuck you want, I’ll fuck you until you can’t walk, Draco, I’ll do it all and more, and I’ll make it so good for you. If you want more than that, you have it. It’s yours. I’m yours. You can have anything you want, little cat. But I’m not doing anything until you’re sober.”

“Potter!” Draco stared at him in shock, horribly offended and terribly frightened and riotously turned on all at once and he couldn’t seem to come up with words mean enough to express just how much of an _arse_ Potter was being just now saying all of those things.

“I’m sorry,” Potter said, and he did sound sorry, really sorry actually, but that didn’t help.

“So I’m all turned on and I’m not supposed to do anything about it because you grew a conscience?” Wow, he really was slurring, but that was probably beside the point. Definitely. He’d meant definitely. The fact that he was slurring this badly was definitely beside the point of how he was not too drunk to do this.

“I’ll just find someone else to help me,” Draco said, and then jumped at how quickly Potter’s face darkened. His hand hit the wall beside Draco’s head, keeping him from heading to the door. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said harshly.

“If you don’t want me—”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Then stay,” Draco said, and he was suddenly sure he meant more than he was saying. Those two words had another meaning, and if someone had asked, he wouldn’t have been able to explain it, but it didn’t matter, because Potter heard it too.

“Oh, little cat,” he murmured. “I would. I want to. But I promised myself I wasn’t going to hurt you anymore. And you might not want this in the morning. So I can’t do this. Not to you, not to myself. Please, Draco, let me have Neville put you to bed, and we can talk tomorrow. Please?”

The whole thing was making him tired all of a sudden, and he nodded reluctantly. He let Potter direct him to the bed to sit on the edge. A brief kiss brushed his forehead, and then Potter was gone.

*

Harry found Neville near the bottom of the stairs, waiting with Ginny. They both rounded on him with identical looks of shock and _are you fucking kidding me?_

“You didn’t,” Ginny said, already curling one hand in a fist. “He’s completely pissed—”

“I’m aware,” Harry said shortly, and something about his tone of voice and stiff body language was apparently proof that Harry had not actually managed to get any. “He’s going to need a little help undressing, because he’s reached that point where standing up is not easy. Will either of you be here in the morning?”

“We’re sleeping over,” Neville said, giving him a suspicious look.

“Will you tell him that he can come see me tomorrow if he wants? Even if it’s just to yell at me?”

“Is that likely?” Neville asked.

“He’s not too happy with me at the moment.”

Ginny scowled. “What did you do?”

Harry sighed. “I said no because he’s pissed.”

“Oh,” she said. “Good. You’re not entirely without hope.”

“Thanks for that,” Harry snapped, then sighed. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, smirking. “I imagine the pain is just now settling in.”

He was not going there. “Good night,” he said firmly, and headed for the front door.

“Hold up,” Neville said, waving Ginny toward the stairs and coming up to Harry. “I have a question for you.”

“I’m not using him for sex.”

Neville looked taken aback. “Okay.”

“I want him,” Harry said, and it was so true that the words rang loud and clear. Seeing Draco like this tonight—wild and sexy and funny—had convinced him better than anything that this was what he wanted. “Do me a favor and don’t say anything, because I’d prefer to tell him myself, but it’s not just sex, and even though I can’t promise I’m in this forever, not yet, I’m in this for real, good and deep, so you don’t have to worry.”

Neville had a small, pleased smile on his face. “All right.”

“All right.”

Harry went home, took a shower, and jerked off. The thought of Draco hot and unraveling in his arms was effective as hell; he came in less than a minute.

Then he settled in bed and was asleep in seconds, quite pleased with the way the night had gone.

*

Except Draco didn’t come to see him. Harry stewed at Grimmauld Place for the whole day, afraid to leave lest he miss Draco coming by, and nervous as hell about how to explain what he wanted. It seemed weird to just suddenly burst out with _“I think I’m still in love with you and I might even like you to be in my life forever, oh, sorry, I think I forgot to say hi. So, how’ve you been?”_ But he also didn’t want Draco to have to ask. That was the something he’d come to upon waking; Draco had spent enough time being unsure of what Harry wanted.

No more.

Harry had been through a lot, and he’d made mistakes, and it had been hard to figure out both what he wanted and if it was right, but he knew now. Draco was his, and he was going to stay that way, and what his little cat needed more than anything was to feel loved and needed.

So that was what he was damn well going to get.

*

As it was, Draco’s absence turned out to be a good thing. It gave him a chance to figure out the tone he wanted to take and also how to handle it if Draco told him to take a flying leap off a broomstick (which he figured was a likely scenario). So he thought and evaluated and asked for advice from Hermione in a way that he thought was subtle but obviously wasn’t because she spent the whole conversation smirking at him. He even made a list, the pros and cons of each scenario, and how they contributed to he wanted to accomplish. Maybe it was over-preparation, but if there was one thing Harry knew, it was how to settle in for a long, hard battle.

And he had no doubt that a battle was what he was in for.

Fucking, he was sure, he wouldn’t have to work so hard to get. But that wasn’t going to be enough, and that was where it was going to get hard. As much as Harry wanted Draco’s body, he wanted his heart more.

*

The day after the party, Draco had woken up bloody sick. Even with a hangover potion, it had taken him most the day to recover, so he had plenty of time to lie in bed and think about Potter’s declaration.

_If you want more than that, you have it. It’s yours. I’m yours._

The problem, Draco admitted, was not the wanting. That he wanted Potter desperately was pretty clear, and not just for sex. He wanted the moment at the Weasley’s house where Potter laughed at his stories and asked him about his parents. He wanted to ask about the nightmares and help soothe the fear away. He wanted the moment at the party last night where Potter quietly explained why he was having the best time of his life. He wanted it all so much that it frightened him.

It frightened him badly, because it hadn’t been this bad before; he hadn’t known Potter as well before, and if it went wrong again, Draco really wasn’t sure he had it in him to recover.

So even when he felt better, even when Neville gave him Potter’s message, he didn’t go.

Let it pass, he thought, even if the idea cut him up.

Of course, he should have known better than to expect Potter to take a hint.

On Wednesday, four days after the party, Miffy showed Potter into The Chapel, where Draco was drinking tea and reading The Prophet. Potter was wind-blown from the breezy May weather, affable in his body language but keeping a respectful distance. He came and took a seat without asking—the ill-bred twit—and gave him a grin.

“Hi,” he said. “How mad at me are you?”

“Not very,” Draco said reluctantly. “Actually, I suppose I owe you a thank you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You could’ve taken advantage. You didn’t.”

“I said I was trying not to hurt you anymore. I meant it.”

“I’m starting to believe you,” Draco admitted.

“Then I’ve timed this well. I have a question for you.”

“Oh?”

“Go out with me.”

“That’s not a question,” Draco said automatically. Then his brain caught up. “What, like on a date?”

“Exactly a date.”

“In public?”

The grin got wider. “Yes, in public. A restaurant. Maybe a museum. Where do the rich and elitist go to get to know each other deeply?”

“That’s not really something we do, at least not in the circles in which I used to run.”

“Oh. Well, we’ll stick with a restaurant and a museum. Unless there’s something else you’d prefer.”

"The press," Draco said weakly.

"I think they already know we had a relationship. As I recall, you shouted the fact that we were fucking to the heavens."

"Don't get cocky."

“It’s made me very popular. Luna’s offered to help me with my fan mail, and she says there’s a lot of naked pictures of people doing shameless things.”

“For crying out loud,” Draco said.

"My reputation really couldn't be better at the moment. I'm pretty hot right now. I could probably get arrested for shoplifting or stealing kittens or having sex on a table in a restaurant or a museum and people would still like me," he mused, still smiling.

"This side of you is unattractive," Draco said.

“You like it.”

“Gobshite.”

“So is that a yes?”

Draco raised his eyebrows. “Are we having the same conversation? What on earth about any of that made you think I was saying yes?”

“The way your hands are shaking.”

Draco swallowed, and the air abruptly became heavier. After a second, he pulled his hands—indeed visibly trembling, back from his cup and into his lap. “Potter,” he said slowly, “I can’t do…”

“It’s okay if you say no.”

“Thank you. I was just about to say yes to spare your tender feelings,” he snapped.

Potter just grinned. “I know better than that. I meant that I’ll just ask again in a couple days.”

Draco gaped at him. “What is wrong with you?”

Potter’s smile faded and he gave Draco that same potent, intent look that he got on his face whenever he was trying to get inside Draco’s head. Or his pants. Either way, it never failed to make Draco nervous.

“I figured something out. And it might sound bad, but it’s me being honest and admitting I’m an arrogant arse.”

“I can accept the arrogant arse part.”

The grin came back. “Christ, you’re perfect. Now you see, all this time, I’ve been thinking that you’ll do something and I’ll realize that we’re actually horrible together. Or—and this only recently occurred to me, that’s the arrogant arse part—that _you_ would wake up and realize that we’re actually horrible together. And I thought that this meant we shouldn’t be together because we risk getting hurt.”

“Okay,” Draco said slowly.

“But then I had an epiphany a bit back. I knew what I wanted before the party, but I couldn’t decide whether or not to act on it. Then, that night, when we were outside standing against the Manor and I was telling you about how I was having the best moment—you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, well, I realized that there was no one I’d rather tell than you. That it felt right telling you. Because you’re already so important to me. Whatever the reason or cause, that’s a simple truth. You’re important to me. And I think, despite everything that’s happened, I’m important to you too.”

He paused to give Draco a chance to answer, but Draco couldn’t. His face felt hot, his stomach nervous.

After a second, Potter went on. “I also realized something else. The whole we’re-important-to-each-other thing? That’s a hell of a lot more than most other couples have in their pockets when they’re trying to decide whether or not to give it a risk. You’re taking a bigger risk than me, I’ll grant you. Not necessarily because you care more, because I’m not sure you do. But because you already know what it’ll feel like if we crash.”

He licked his lips; the first outward sign of nervousness he’d displayed, Draco thought dimly. Nice to know he wasn’t the only one tied up in knots.

“But here’s the thing, Draco. I can’t promise not to hurt you, because no one can promise that. I’m gonna fuck up, you’re gonna fuck up, and at some point one of us might well decide that it’s harder being together than it is to be apart. But I will promise you this: I will not disrespect you again. I will never lie to you again. If you let me have you, I will put you first. I will make you feel loved every single day that we’re together. And I will try with everything I have in me to make this work.”

Draco blinked. Then he blinked some more.

“So it’s okay that you’re saying no. I understand if you need more time. And until you get to the point where you can say yes, we’ll do the friend thing. Hang out. Whatever. But I’m not giving up. I’ll just keep asking you until you either say yes or tell me to fuck off forever and get out of your life.”

“What if I can’t say yes for a long time?” Draco asked, his voice small.

“I've got nothing but time, little cat.”

Then Potter stood, and cleared his throat, and nodded.

“All right,” he said. “Okay. That’s it.”

“That’s it?” Draco asked, utterly confused.

“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I’d like to stay and talk for a while, but I’ve given you rather a lot to think about, and judging from your reaction, it might be best if I give you a little time to do that.”

“Um.”

Potter grinned again. “I’m going to drop by again in the next few days. You know, just to ask again. And whatever you decide to say, maybe we could do something together. You can invite Neville or Ginny if that will make you feel better.”

“Uh-huh.” Draco stared up at him, still mostly blinking.

“I’ll see you then. Have a nice few days.” Then, with a jaunty wave, Potter left.

He left.

The bastard actually freaking left.

Draco shook his head numbly. What the hell had just happened?

He got up, paced. Took deep breaths. Replayed the conversation over and over.

Realized he had a small smile on his face.

Ran for it.

*

When Neville opened his door to an out of breath Draco, he looked reassuringly normal.

“The world has not ended?” Draco asked.

“Nooo,” Neville replied cautiously.

“And I’m not dreaming.”

“Also no.”

“Am I crazy?”

“Maybe?”

“Potter says he wants me to go out with him. I said no.”

“Okay.”

“So he said he’d ask again in a few days.”

“Points for perseverance, I guess.”

“Because I’m important to him.”

“That’s a good thing, right?”

Draco swallowed. “I’m scared.”

Neville’s face softened. “Of course you are. Now get your bony arse in here and we’ll call Ginny and the two of you can braid each other’s hair while I do something manly, and we’ll talk it out.”

Draco stepped over the threshold. “I love you,” he said fervently.

“I know.”

*

Harry took it as a good sign that Draco was at the Manor alone on Saturday. Harry was brought into The Chapel once more and sat down with a grin beside the waiting tea platter, as yet untouched--Draco had waited for him, which was another good sign. The other boy was dressed once more in his tailored trousers and a slim-fitting Henley, this one a deep, midnight blue.

“Hi.”

“Potter.”

“You look great.”

Draco nearly stuttered, which Harry found cute, then managed to say, “Thank you,” in a rather even voice.

“Will you go out with me?”

“No,” Draco said, but gently. An excellent sign.

“Okay. So what do you want to do today?”

“I don’t…I don’t know what to do with this.”

“That’s okay. We’ll figure it out. As for now, I was thinking maybe you could show me the Manor. I’d really like to see it. After tea, of course.”

“Of course,” Draco said faintly.

They began to eat in surprisingly comfortable silence. Harry tried his best not to stare at the fine, high cheekbones or elegant hands.

“What’s that you’re looking at?” he asked, nodding at the thick piles of paper spread on the table.

“Profit and loss statements.”

“Oh. From your land?”

“The returns on our land, rents from the extensive properties we own, various holdings, myriad investments and the like. And my father was on the board of several successful enterprises, which contributes.”

“Huh. You’re like, stupid rich, huh?”

Draco smiled a little bit. “Moronically.”

“I’m not after your cash, by the way. I’m moderately dumb myself. My parents weren’t poor, and then I inherited the remnants of the Black family fortune.”

“Ah.” Draco’s lips twisted. “I see.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What? Out with it.”

The smirk grew. “I’d hate to make a boy feel inadequate.”

“Say it, you minx.”

“Let’s just say that you’re actually quite clever in comparison.”

Harry could feel his eyebrows climb his face. “Gotcha. So, the profits on that paper would be in the seven figures?”

“This quarter we’re only the high six, actually. My father was a little distracted over the last few months, so it’s leaner than usual, but normally, yes, we’d be somewhere in the mid-seven figures. And there have been centuries of these kinds of quarters, so…you do the math.”

“I can’t do that math in my head,” Harry said, impressed despite himself.

Draco laughed. “If it helps, I’m terribly embarrassed about it.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, not remotely,” Draco said, and laughed again; Harry felt pleased.

“What do you do with all that money?”

Draco leaned forward slightly, becoming more animated as he spoke. “Well, other Malfoys have chosen the ‘hoarding’ method, but I don’t really understand that. What’s the point of money you don’t spend? I can see having some for a rainy day and it’s always good to have that kind of money coming in, but only so far as you can make it _do_ something. So I was thinking about skimming some and donating to war relief to start, half a million would be a good start probably. I’ve sent some to St. Mungo’s because there were a lot of people injured in the battle and they’re struggling with meeting the need. And then there’s…what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I love you.”

Draco went white, and Harry closed his eyes. That had maybe not been the best time to blurt that out. But he’d _meant_ it. Listening to Draco, his spoiled, selfish, superficial Draco talk about giving away vast amounts of money—and the idea that he considered half a million _skimming_ was a little appalling, but whatever—to charity in the hopes of easing the effects of the war? It hadn’t occurred to Harry to do that, and he had far more money than the vast majority of people he knew, thanks to his parents and Sirius, and he of all people should’ve thought of it, having experienced the effects firsthand. And to see Draco so casual about it, as if it were only natural to do such a thing?

Of course Harry had said it. How could he have done otherwise?

It was jumping a bit ahead of the plan, though, so he changed the subject. “I suppose we should take a tour around this little meal ticket of yours, huh?”

Draco sat stiffly in his chair for a moment. “You can’t just say that.”

“No, maybe it wasn’t fair. I can apologize for saying it, but that won’t change the fact that I feel it.”

“You don’t,” Draco insisted.

“I’ve felt this way since that day in the shower, little cat. It might have faded when the potion went, but then you had to go and turn yourself into one of the strongest, most fascinating, and decent people I’ve ever known, so I’m fairly certain at this point that the feelings are sticking around.”

“I didn’t do it for you!” Draco cried, lurching to his feet.

Harry stayed sitting. So Snape had been closer to the truth; the changes had been part of Draco struggling to get over him, as a way of reaching for his own happiness. Good. That was far better than the alternative, of Draco changing himself profoundly just to get Harry to care about him. The very idea made Harry uncomfortable; he neither wanted the power nor respected the behavior.

“I’m glad,” he said calmly. “I wouldn’t deserve it, and frankly, it would’ve been a little creepy.”

Draco shook his head. “I could murder you. I’m so confused right now. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“I vote for taking a walk,” Harry said.

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

“You get mad when I say other things. Let’s take a walk.”

“Oh, all right, you bossy arse. Get your damn cloak.”

“It’s warm out.”

“Just do something I say for once!”

“I didn’t bring it,” Harry said, and laughed—probably not his brightest move ever, as he was summarily wearing a cupful of lukewarm tea across his face. With a sigh, he pulled out his wand.

*

Sartorial arguments aside, they actually had a nice afternoon, aided by the fact that Draco seemed to find the topic of the Manor safe. He schooled Harry on the proper way to say _demesne_ and since they were already on their broomsticks to take a look at the forested land on the back acreage, it was easy to just keep on flying and have an impromptu little test of skills with a snitch. Harry was badly out of practice, but fell in the swing rather quickly and he laughed more than he had in a long time, thrilled about the way the competition made Draco’s eyes narrow with concentration and annoyance even as the wind had his pale skin flushing an enticing pink.

There were several moments where the tension between them grew nearly unbearable and Harry found himself all but sitting on his hands to keep from reaching out and taking what he wanted. But he’d pushed hard enough today already and he’d promised himself that he wouldn’t do more than kiss the other boy until Draco had agreed to date him, which meant he needed to be in complete control of his urges before making a move or risk ruining it all; he’d realized after his impulsive offer at the party that he couldn’t afford to sleep with Draco until things were cemented. The last thing he wanted was to fall into a fuck-buddy scenario.

It was Draco’s heart or nothing.

*

Fortunately, when it came to getting Draco to agree to go out with him, he had an unexpected ally: Draco’s libido, which did not appreciate the frequent contact without relief, and if there was one thing Harry had resigned himself to, it was that their chemistry was both ridiculous and likely permanent.

And once he realized he could be using this weapon to his advantage, Harry was merciless.

They took a trip to a Muggle cinema with Lavender and Cho to see a movie one afternoon and Harry took the opportunity to set his hand at the small of Draco’s back, stroking with his thumb once, to guide him through a door.

A few days later, Draco showed him old Malfoy family portraits in the upstairs passages; Harry used his body to angle Draco into a corner and press him lightly against the wall. He dipped his head, pressing their temples together and letting his hands settle on Draco’s slim hips. After a few moments where they simply leaned against each other and tried to breathe normally, Harry let his hands wander, down and around, stroking firm buttocks before cupping them and rocking their hips together gently, again and again. They were both hard, and Harry had verged on losing control for a second before stepping back.

He’d sort of thought Draco was going to hit him then. He had kind of wanted to hit himself. His balls had ached for the rest of the day.

And when they finally did make it to a museum—the Museum of Ancient Wizardly Artefacts--Harry stopped Draco in front of a vase full of Ye Olde Rabid Poisonous Dust, and it didn’t really seem to matter that he’d picked perhaps the most unromantic place to lower his head and brush a short series of gentle, open-mouthed kisses against the nape of a pale neck, because Draco trembled and sighed gorgeously anyway.

When they apparated back to the Manor that night, Draco was uncharacteristically quiet.

“You all right?” Harry asked.

“No,” he said sourly. “I want to fuck.”

The baldness of that statement made Harry think _thank God,_ because he was going entirely insane, and this was a sign that Draco might cave soon.

“So can we or what?” Draco asked.

“Be still my heart,” Harry said.

“Shut it, you’re twisting me up on purpose.”

“I am. I’m also not going to have sex with you until we’re a couple. I don’t have sex with my friends, and fuck-buddies isn’t something you do with exes; it’s unkind.”

“But you’ll kiss and grope your friends?”

“Yup. Only kissing and groping.”

“That’s convenient,” Draco said flatly.

“Do you want me to stop?”

Draco didn’t say anything, just stormed inside.

But the next time Harry asked him out, he said yes.

*

“This is the worst idea ever,” Draco said.

“Or it could be the best idea ever,” Ginny pointed out, directing her queen to take Neville’s rook.

“It could be somewhere in the middle, too, you dirty extremists,” Neville replied.

“No,” Draco said, thoughtfully. “Pretty much sure it’s the worst.”

“It’s a date, not a dark ritual,” Ginny said. “Ooh, check!”

Draco scowled. “A dark ritual I could handle.”

“Advice for you?” Neville offered, and Draco lifted his head. “You’re already as wrapped up in him as it’s possible to be. You’ll get hurt if it goes badly regardless of the label you put on it. You might as well get the benefits if you’re taking the risk anyway. Let yourself be happy, mate. You deserve it.”

“Oh, because it’s just that easy?”

Neville grinned. “Sometimes.”

“I said check!” Ginny said, and hit Neville in the arm. “Pay attention!”

Draco studied the two of them and thought about the things that could happen when you let people in. Maybe it was just that easy.

*

“You are not wearing that,” Hermione said.

“Of course I’m not,” Harry said, trying to sound offended while looking down at his clothes and thinking _what the hell’s wrong with what I’m wearing?_

“You want green,” she said, already bustling through his closet.

“It’ll bring out your eyes,” Ron said knowingly from his place on Harry’s bed.

“Oh, will it?” Harry asked him.

“You should’ve gotten a haircut,” Hermione said, pulling out button-downs and ties. She sounded cross, like Harry had done something unforgivably criminal in not taking care of his split ends.

“Leave the man alone. It’ll just grow back in an hour anyway,” Ron pointed out.

“Ron, it’s important,” Hermione said waspishly. “Draco is the kind of person who notices these details. Don’t we want Harry to do well?”

“Harry deserves someone who will acknowledge that his hair is impossible and always will be,” Ron pointed out reasonably.

Harry’s heart hurt as he watched them argue over him. “I’ve been blessed in having you two,” he said quietly.

Hermione’s eyes filled with tears and she awkwardly smoothed the fabric against his arm. “Oh, Harry. That’s…that’s true for us as well, you know.”

“Yeah,” Ron said, clearing his throat, his cheeks bright red. “Same goes, mate.”

“Well,” Harry said, feeling awkward and ready to be past the serious moment, “of course it’s true for you. I’m Harry Potter.”

He was met with two thrown pillows and grinned.

*

The restaurant could’ve been flooded with water and Harry might not have noticed; Draco was that handsome in a perfectly tailored suit. He looked crisp and expensive and sophisticated as he ordered dinner for both of them in French, and Harry had to remind himself that this was the same boy who had worn makeup and leather pants while setting effigies on fire.

No wonder Harry was mad for him.

The silence was a little awkward at first, because there was a sharp knowledge hanging in the air. A charged pressure in which they both silently acknowledged _yes, we’re trying this, yes it could crash and burn, yes it might be worth it._

“Nice tie,” Draco said.

“Ron said it brings out my eyes.”

Draco’s lips twitched. “Who would’ve thought Weasel knew so much about color palettes?”

Harry grinned, and then the waiter arrived with their wine. They waited patiently while it was poured and the waiter left.

“There’s something that’s been bothering me,” Draco asked.

“Go ahead.”

“How bad are the nightmares?”

Harry paused to think. “Not so bad anymore.”

“That was quite the hesitation for such an innocuous answer.”

“Well, it’s more that they’ve changed.” He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table, enjoying the way Draco’s gaze showed an instant of resignation at the unmannered gesture. “At first they were about any number of things, all of them rather horrible. The fiendfyre in the Room of Requirement. The graveyard came back, and watching Cedric die.Sirius dying. I saw Colin Creevey’s body in the Great Hall at Hogwarts—that one gave me a few bad moments. And then, I suppose, it was a lot of being in the clearing, with him and the Death Eaters all around me, knowing what was about to happen, trying to keep breathing, forcing myself not to react or fight back. Hearing him crow about it.”

Draco nodded quietly. “You just had to stand there and let him kill you?”

“Would’ve defeated the purpose to fight back, don’t you think?” Harry managed lightly.

“That was very brave.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I was shaking the whole time. I’ll admit, I thought about cutting out once or twice.”

“No, you didn’t.”

The pure, shining trust and certainty in Draco’s face made Harry weak-kneed. Good thing he was already sitting.

“Anyway,” he said, taking a sip of water to collect himself. “They aren’t about that so much anymore. The dreams might’ve been worse if I hadn’t seen Dumbledore while I was dead.”

A pale eyebrow lifted, but Draco didn’t say anything.

“He reminded me about your wand.”

“Ah, you mean the wand you stole.”

“The very same.” Harry smiled. “You searched for it everywhere, and almost the second after you took off, I saw it on the floor, plain as day, a meter from my feet. I picked it up and it vibrated in my hand. Like it knew me. It felt like you.”

“Were you planning to return it before or after you died?” Draco asked wryly.

“This will make me sound like a right shit, but I wasn’t going to give it back at all. I saw you take Rookwood’s wand so I knew you weren’t defenseless, and I didn’t even know where you’d gone, and frankly, I had stuff I needed to do so I couldn’t just search for you. And when I was in the forest, walking, it was…well, it was immeasurably comforting having a part of you with me.”

Draco reached tentatively across the table and took his hand. The touch made Harry’s fingers tingle faintly.

“Now the dreams are different,” he said. “Now they’re about the walk to the forest, about using the Resurrection Stone to see Sirius and my mum and dad, having them with me as I was carrying your wand. Going to my death. Even though I knew what was coming, it was still so wonderful to see all of them. To have something of yours with me that felt like you.”

“Is it awful? Dreaming of that, I mean.”

“Yes and no. In a way, they’re the best dreams I’ve ever had. Except that the whole time I know it’s not going to last. Any of it. And then I wake up, and it feels like all my reasons for walking into that clearing are lost. Sometimes when I wake up, I feel…” He cleared his throat, embarrassed to find that he was choked up. He’d cried more than a few times waking up after that dream, and as much as he longed to see them again, the pain from losing them had faded a bit; his need for Draco had not.

“Not everything is lost,” Draco said, and Harry looked at him closely. He’d sounded slightly uncertain, and now he shifted uncomfortably under Harry’s gaze.

“No?” Harry asked, fully absorbed in Draco’s answer.

“I—”

The waiter returned with their meals, and they used the opportunity to start over on new topics. Some were light—discussions of shows Draco was watching, books he was reading, Harry’s ongoing search for new hobbies now that he actually had the time and the freedom to pursue some. Others were harder—Harry’s expression of mild worry that Draco would hold Crabbe’s and Goyle’s deaths against him because of what had happened in the Room of Requirement while looking for the diadem, his relief that Draco didn’t.

“They picked a side; it was the wrong one. I regret that they died, but if someone had to…I’m glad it wasn’t you,” Draco said simply.

But the wine and the conversation flowed, and if, once or twice, they noticed other people in the restaurant staring at them or whispering ( _it’s Harry Potter and that boy who said he was good in bed!),_ they didn’t pay any attention.

And Harry stared into light gray eyes and watched the glow from the lamps warm pale skin, and realized he knew what happiness was.

*

Draco had gotten used to Potter being strong.

However, during dinner, he’d gotten to see another side of him. A side that was younger, slightly more uncertain, maybe even a little lost. This was the part of Harry, Draco suspected, that only Granger and Weasel routinely got to see.

He felt privileged to see this, to have the right, to be chosen.

And Draco stared into bright green eyes and watched as Harry shyly tipped his face down as he spoke in a low voice, and realized he knew what happiness was.

*

They stood outside on the gravel drive before the Manor, looking up at stars in the clear night. Harry wasn’t sure how much to try for—a kiss? Maybe more? It occurred to him that he hadn’t gone on a proper date before. He didn’t know the protocol. He only knew that he wanted more. He’d made up his mind, and he wanted everything that came with it.

“I won’t let you do it again,” Draco said abruptly.

Harry glanced at him, eyes tense. The tone did not bode well. “I’m going to need a little more than that if you want me to comply.”

“I’m talking about you making decisions for both of us without consulting me. If I’m going to have to deal with the consequences, I get a say. It’s a deal-breaker for me, Potter.”

Harry got scared. Something in Draco’s face was hard, uncompromising, and Harry was suddenly sure that Draco had made up his mind that he did not want Harry at all. That they really had only ended up here because Draco was so horny he would make bad decisions about fucking. Panic began to curl in the back of Harry’s mind.

“Do you understand?” Draco asked.

“That you decide for you?”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

“Good.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, his voice guttural. He forced himself to ask the question he most feared the answer to. “Is it…did you just say yes to the date because you’re horny? Is that what you’re telling me with this deal-breaker stuff? Have I lost you?”

“I’m explaining basic facts,” Draco said.

“Have I lost you?” Harry repeated, the panic growing so that he emphasized every word.

Draco gave him an exasperated look that clearly meant _you are stupid,_ before licking his lips and pulling out his wand.

“ _Expecto Patronum!_ ”

A blur of silver light exploded from his wand. His Patronus danced around for a few seconds, then came to stand before Harry, looking up at him with a steady, searching gaze, who stared back with his mouth trembling open.

Draco shifted his weight a bit uncertainly. “It's a serval. I'd never seen one before, so I matched it to pictures in a book and read all about them. They're from Africa. Obviously not domesticated, and as not as large as—”

A sound came from Harry, rough and explosive and thick. "It's a cat," he whispered.

Draco scowled. "It's a _serval_."

The feline creature was smaller than a cheetah, and far leaner, more elegant, and its coat bore the faint imprint of spots. It stood on long legs, with adorably overlarge ears on top of its head.

"Servals," Draco continued pedantically, if a bit too quickly to truly pass as calm, "are fast, and very good jumpers. They are very efficient killers, and are extremely intelligent, able to solve problems and get into mischief, and--"

"It's a little cat," Harry murmured.

"It's not little,” Draco said quickly. “Housecats are little. And common. And tame. This is a serval, Harry. It’s not tame. It’s African. It's _medium_.”

"It's a little cat," Harry repeated, and something in his chest was hot and tight, and his throat was closing.

Draco saw it, of course he did, and gave a reluctant sigh. "Yes, it's a little cat."

Harry's hand shook as he took Draco's face in his hands. "Draco," he breathed.

"I'm yours," Draco whispered simply. "I've always been yours, Harry.”

Then they were kissing, and Harry’s heart was expanding, and he kept laughing in between kisses, and he couldn’t touch Draco enough, couldn’t get his fill. Somehow they ended up inside, stumbling up the stairs clumsily, barely keeping each other from falling and breaking their heads. And still Harry stroked and kissed and touched his Draco.

“Mine,” he whispered.

“Yours,” he heard.

He pushed Draco down the hall, stopping to press him up against walls a few times because he just couldn’t wait to push against him, feel him close, and then Harry would remember that to go farther he wanted a bed, and he would make them start walking again.

Smooth skin under his fingertips. A wet mouth, warm and eager beneath his. Firm flesh snug against him. Teeth sank into his throat. The grip of fists in his hair yanked his head down for more, and Harry realized dimly that he was muttering words: “I want you. I watch you, every detail, and it’s been driving me insane for _weeks,_ fuck, for _months,_ remembering what your nipples look like, what your cock tastes like, how tight your arse is, those long legs wrapped around my hips, holding me tight, Christ.”

He broke off to shove Draco down on the bed. He ripped off that perfect tailored suit, feeling the slim body shifting to help him. Fabric tore and buttons flew. He bent down, put his mouth against a lean shoulder. He kissed and bit and wrapped a hand around the back of Draco’s neck, lifting him into an arch.

He noticed, for the very first time, two new things which had been previously hidden from his attention by the potion. Draco had thin scars across his chest— _Sectumsempra,_ Harry thought with a wince—and there, on his forearm, the dreaded Dark Mark, a black stain on his otherwise pale skin. Harry did not like either—two of those supposed impediments to his affection—but knew, as well, that they were signs of how far Draco had come, because neither spoke of who he was anymore.

He pressed a kiss to the mark, then traced his tongue over the scars.

“I love you,” he said. “You’ve had my guts tied up in a fucking knot for weeks, and just being with you, like this, has me feeling more alive than I have since before I died.”

He sucked on a pebbled nipple, heard Draco cry out. It wasn’t enough. He needed more. He yanked Draco’s thighs wide and settled between them, groaning at the feel of their hard cocks rubbing together through their clothes. He ran his hands everywhere—collarbones, ribs, down long arms to delicate wrists. He pushed Draco’s arms above his head and rubbed himself against the hollow of a sweet hip and closed his eyes at the sheer, towering pleasure that roared through him.

Draco was bucking beneath him, making soft little mewling sounds.

“Fuck, Draco,” he gritted out. “Let me. Let me touch you. Let me kiss you and have you and take you. Let me inside. I'll make it good, little cat. I'll make it sweet for you. Would you like that?”

“Yes, Harry,” Draco cried, and melted, he fucking melted, and it felt so good to feel the last of Draco’s will seep from him. The body beneath his didn’t lose its strain or tension, but the last of the inhibitions were gone; Draco would do anything Harry asked now, and the trust implicit in it made Harry feel ten feet tall. “Is that what you want? Slow and sweet? Lots of kisses? Or do you want it harder? You want me to pull you close, roll you over, hold you down? Thrust until you can't think? I can do that too, little cat, whatever you want, however you want it. Just let me. Please, Christ, just let me.”

“Whatever you want,” Draco moaned.

Harry laved the long column of Draco’s throat with his tongue, finding the flush of arousal in the pale skin irresistible. His hands had released Draco’s wrists to reach beneath the smaller boy and cup the fit buttocks, lifting the boy’s hips in time to his own thrusts. Draco was twisting madly now, begging in short, wordless gasps, long legs coming up to wrap around Harry’s hips.

 _Yes,_ Harry thought. _This. This is what I’ve been missing._

He could feel orgasm building and forced himself to back off, smug enough to enjoy Draco’s wail of protest. He moved quickly, stripping the other boy with brutal efficiency before rolling him face down.

“Lube,” he growled. One hand waved in the general direction of the right side nightstand, and Harry lunged. Seconds later, he was pushing long thighs wide and staring down at a pink pucker. He cast a quick cleansing spell—more for Draco’s benefit than his own, as Harry didn’t want even a hint of self-consciousness to interfere—and set his mouth to the sweet little muscle. Draco moaned and Harry held him firmly in place, using his hands to spread the pert cheeks wide. He licked and swirled and teased, the pulse of need driving within him until all he could think was _more._

Draco was shuddering, frotting against the sheets.

“Don’t come,” Harry ordered.

“I have to!”

After a second of hesitation, Harry landed a fiendishly hard smack on one buttock, making Draco yelp and fall still. “Don’t you dare,” Harry said. He watched Draco’s reaction carefully, making sure he hadn’t pushed too far. “Or there will be consequences.”

“Yes, Harry,” Draco cried, apparently completely unbothered by the spank. “All right.”

Certain that he would have the obedience he’d requested, Harry returned to his work, trailing his mouth first over the red palm print and then against the pink muscle again, this time curving his tongue wetly inside. He pumped and thrust, loosening Draco up, getting him ready.

When he couldn’t stand waiting anymore, he sat up, slicking his fingers quickly with the lube. He pushed one in, shocked by how tight he found the passage. It had been a while, and that answered Harry’s occasional worry that there had been someone else while they’d been apart. No, Harry was the only one who had ever spread Draco open like this, who knew what it was to have the boy pliant and desperate in his arms.

Harry worked him slowly, easing in a second finger, then curling them both against Draco’s prostate, making him groan, “Fuck, yes, Harry, _please_.”

“Soon,” Harry promised, trying to unclasp his belt without having to give up the exquisite pleasure of fingering Draco’s arse. After a minute he had to admit that it wasn’t going to happen, and he quickly stood to shuck off the last of his clothing. Then he began again, one finger, then two, stretching and scissoring, and then three, and it was nearly an impossible fit, just like the first time, and Harry had to pause and breathe so he wouldn’t just push in and hurt him.

Draco didn’t care for the hesitation at all. He shoved his hips back shamelessly. “Fuck me, Harry. Please. Please. Give me your cock. Please. I need you.”

“Shall I call you my little slut again?” Harry asked, determined not to cross any lines, giving Draco the chance to protest.

“Yes. Your slut. Please, whatever you want, just fuck me.”

Harry rubbed lube over his aching cock with a shaking hand. “Lift up,” he growled. “Lift those pretty hips for me.”

Draco obeyed.

“That’s my good boy.” And like a key into a lock, Harry slid home.

Draco’s body bowed, his head going to the mattress, flanks shivering. Harry went still to give him time to adjust and ran a soothing hand down the knobs of his spine, leaning forward and pressing kisses over delicate shoulder blades, trying desperately to keep control. Draco was so damn _tight_ that Harry could barely breathe through the sensation.

“Harry,” Draco said uncertainly.

“You can take it,” Harry said firmly. “Give it a second. It’s just been a while.”

“Yes,” he said, still sounding strained, and Harry reached around, trailed his fingers lightly over the thick cock, breathing hard at the incredibly hoarse moan that spilled from Draco’s throat at the touch. Harry pumped several times, and a slight bit of the overwhelming pressure around his cock relaxed.

“That’s it,” Harry encouraged. “That’s right. Spread yourself open for me.”

Draco’s thighs widened still further, and Harry began to move.

He tried to keep it slow and easy, he really did. But the feel of Draco—blindingly hot, soft as velvet, wet and tight, all at once—had short-circuited his brain. He stopped thinking, got lost. Draco was rocking back beneath him, hard onto his cock, then forward into his hand, and he was making the most delectable little noises.

“Not yet,” Harry managed.

“Please!”

“Wait.”

“Harry!” Draco shuddered and gasped and finally cried in a flurry of words, “Let go. Let go. I’ll come, let go.”

Harry released Draco’s cock reluctantly, but now he had another hand to hold onto the slim hips and direct his thrusts. He found the good angle, and felt like roaring when Draco all but collapsed under him.

He thrust hard and deep, wild with need, close to mad, almost gone…

But when he looked down, he couldn’t see anything but blond hair, and that wasn’t what Harry wanted at all. He wanted Draco to see him, to know who was fucking him, to see that it mattered to Harry as much as it did.

“Not like this,” he muttered.

He pulled out, rolling them so Harry was sitting up with his back against the headboard and his legs straight out. He yanked Draco onto him, and the other boy barely hesitated even though they’d never used this position before. He straddled Harry in an instant, impaling himself on Harry’s cock and rocking and lifting hard and fast.

“Open your eyes,” Harry gritted.

Draco obeyed, as he was wont to do when he was this lost in fucking. His eyes were distant, unfocused, face slack with pleasure, his mouth trembling open on panted breaths, body fluid and graceful and furiously working. He wrapped his arms around Harry’s neck, and Harry took his mouth, over and over, pulling back only to stare into that beautiful face.

“Look at me, little cat,” Harry whispered. He wasn’t going to last much longer; his gut was in knots, his balls full and drawing up. He slid a hand between their bodies, finding Draco’s cock and pulling at it.

Draco’s gaze sharpened, locked onto his. At the same time, Harry began to rock his own hips, deepening the thrusts, helping Draco move faster. He increased the friction on Draco’s cock.

“Don’t look away,” he demanded. “Feel me inside you. Take me. Take all of me. You stay with me when you come, Draco. You’re mine.”

“I’m yours. I love you,” Draco said, and the words were soft, sweet, pure. The corners of his lips curved up faintly, and then he jerked hard, body wanting to arch, but he remained obedient even in orgasm, keeping the eye contact as he cried out. His hands locked like claws on Harry’s shoulders and come splattered Harry’s chest and belly.

With a roar, Harry rolled them over again, shoved Draco wide and pounded into the other boy with all his strength. He felt the smaller body beneath him lax and pliant with pleasure and his orgasm hit him from behind with the weight of a fucking tree falling. He lost track of everything—the bed, the room, the world, and all he saw was Draco’s sleepy, contented smirk and those heavy-lidded eyes staring into his as the heat burned through him.

Harry collapsed.

It took them quite some time to recover. Draco lay like the dead, body boneless and heavy, and it was all Harry could do to get him cleaned up and facing the right direction on the bed so the covers could be pulled up. Harry’s arms and legs felt like limp noodles, and he sagged back into place beside Draco with his head foggy with impending sleep.

"You have to love my mouse," Draco murmured.

"That sounds like a euphemism. But don't worry. He kept you sane, which I appreciate, and I've never had a problem with rodents, if you'll recall. Consider it done."

“And no more stupidity, Harry,” Draco continued, his eyes falling shut. “We’re in it together now.”

“Yes, little cat, we are,” he whispered, pressing soft kisses to his throat and ear. Draco arched into them, all but purring.

“You go down, I go down.”

“That can be arranged,” Harry murmured lasciviously.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” Draco replied, but he sounded sweet, soft, and sleepy.

Harry grinned. “After all this time, we’re back to mutually-assured destruction, aren’t we?”

“If we’re lucky,” Draco managed through a yawn.

They fell asleep entwined.

*

Harry woke first, surprised that he hadn’t moved all night; he’d been flailing around in his bed the last few weeks, waking up at odd hours. But here, now, the sun was up and Draco was still clasped tightly in his arms, breathing deeply. Harry closed his eyes again, taking in the moment. It felt right to be here. This was where he belonged.

It had been struggle and pain that brought him and Draco together, but he suddenly couldn't regret any of the terrifying or painful events he'd lived through. If they were the price for the gift of the boy sleeping in his arms, he'd pay it. He lay for a long time, content and breathing peacefully, inhaling the soft, clean scent of his little cat.

Eventually, fresh need rose, as it tended to do, and it absolutely fucking put the cap on his life at that moment that he could do something about it. Yes, he decided, he’d pay any price for the right to do this, to kiss and worship and take the boy he held. And really, in retrospect, he mused with a smile, rolling Draco onto his stomach, loving the slight snore, pulling the sheet down to expose the pale, perfect buttocks—in retrospect, dying hadn't been that bad.

Of course, he thought, pressing a kiss to the curve of that lovely back, living was better.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, feel free to move on to the epilogue, but it's really just a small bit of smut giving a glimpse of the boys in a few years. In case you're not interested now that the main story is done, I hope you enjoyed it, and I thank you again for reading, especially if you somehow made your way through the entire series. That's perseverance, man. I salute you. =)


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